Save Money on Grocery Shopping, Part 5b of 5

FL was a success!  I spent more than I planned, but they had cat litter on sale - unadvertised - but since the Arm & Hammer Laundry Detergent was on sale, I figured they might have the litter on sale too, so I brought my coupons along, just in case.  Saved $1.50/each off of 2 from the WM price.  Score! 


OK, Now I'm going to take you along while I plan my Kroger trip.  This is going to be fun, I promise...AND, it will be the last post in this series.  Whew!

First thing I do is gather my grocery list.  Mmmmm, not much this week - tuna, powdered milk, yogurt, milk, Popsicles.

Second, log in to coupon mom . com and select "Grocery Deals by State," from the scroll down list I select "VA-Kroger-Central"
Here is the screen that results from that selection:

(You can see that my BSecure Internet Filter is filtering out unwanted ads :)

Look down at the bottom right hand corner - I know, its tiny, but you'll see "% Saved" and two arrows.  Click on the arrow pointing "down".  What this does is give you the items that are on sale with the highest % off first, like so:

(I do it this way because I'm probably not interested in the items toward the bottom of the list that are listed as being on sale but are really only 0%-25% off)

See those words in red?  Those are FREE items!  Woo-hooo!!  See why I love this stuff?


OK, here's what you do next.  On the far left hand side of the screen there is a tiny box.  Scroll through the Kroger sale list and check off the items you want to add to your grocery list.  If you're looking for a specific item, like TUNA, you can put it in the box on the upper left hand corner (above) to pull up that deal.

After you've made your selections, hit, "Display Selected Deals" at the bottom of the screen and you'll get a list like this:



Now, you can either email this list to yourself to print later, or print it directly.

The next step is to gather your coupons. 

OK, on the left are some codes:  N/A (no coupon available); PG = Proctor & Gamble, RP = Red Plum, S=SmartSource.  These are all names of the coupon inserts in which you will find your coupons.  So....go to your coupon organizer, look at the dates on your hanging files and pull the coupon inserts out of them, where you've been saving them for at least two weeks!  Look in those magic flyers and find the aforementioned coupons. 

Clip those coupons to the list that you printed out and shop away! 

As you can see from my list above, if I had all those coupons (I don't*) I would be able to purchase 14 items for a total price of $5.94 (not really**)!!

*I know I've already used a couple of those coupons, and I know that I don't have the 6/6 coupon files because I threw them away by mistake (horrors!).

**See how after some of the items it says, "promo item"?  That means, in this case, you have to buy a certain number of an item to get the discount.  With Kroger, its usually mix-and-match, and there are a dozen or more items that count toward the number you have to purchase.  Usually its something like by 10, get 30% off each item.  And usually, you'll have a few coupons for those items in your coupon box.  But, if you don't, and you still want the deal, just purchase the lowest cost item in the promotion to fill in the gap.

Now what?

Go shopping!  Stick to the list, don't be afraid to miss a sale (stay in your budget), have fun!

Oh, and about those items in RED....we just won't use some of them, but I'll probably pick them up anyways.  Donate them!  Your church undoubtedly has a food pantry, or else you can collect a bunch of stuff and surprise a college kid with 'em.  You can also stockpile them so that when you run out of shampoo or whatever you're not making a "quick trip" to the store which we all know will only result in buying extra stuff you don't really need.

One more thing:  You'll notice that my personal "needs" grocery list and the Kroger list don't really match up, except for that tuna and yogurt.  Does this justify my driving 20+ miles one way?  Notsomuch.  But, I'll be close to the Clifton Forge Kroger anyways and I need powdered milk, and their price is better than anywhere else for it.  So, unless I had to be over there anyways, this wouldn't be a good stockup week for me.  I have plenty of soap and toothpaste, deodorant and shampoo in my stockpile.  But since I'll be there anyways and some of the stuff is free....well, you get the idea.

Well, that about wraps it up.  Any questions?  Comments?  Does this work for you?  Lemme know and keep saving your coupon inserts - they'll save you $$!!