Frugal living tip #2.

Silence Dogood here. It’s Monday, and that means it’s time for another frugal living tip as part of Poor Richard’s Almanac’s 52-part series to help everybody (and that includes us) get through these tough financial times. This week, let’s talk about grocery shopping. Here are ten tips to help you stretch those food dollars and cents:

1. Avoid impulse buys. With hundreds of thousands of products cramming grocery aisles, it’s easy to see a new flavored coffee or deli dinner or ice cream or shampoo that you simply must try. Oh! That magazine cover looks interesting. Wait, aren’t those collapsible measuring cups intriguing? And, look, aren’t those mangoes over there? Didn’t you see this cereal advertised on television? Maybe you should buy that new wonder cold cure you read about just in case… Impulse buys can triple your grocery bills, which is bad enough when you’ve got the cash but inexcusable when money is tight. Worse still, many impulse purchases go uneaten or unused, which means you’ve not only wasted money, you’ve thrown it out. I’m not saying you should never try something new, but how about making a deal with yourself to buy one impulse item a month, and then try to make sure it’s something your family will really like?

2. Clip those coupons. Yes, it’s boring and it takes time. But coupon savings can add up, especially if you have a coupon and apply it to a sale item. Set aside half an hour one day a week to go through the coupon pages of your paper or “super saver” mailers and cut out the ones you need. (If you like to download coupons, make sure your grocery accepts them.) But don’t, do not, succumb to coupons for products you don’t use, however tempting. That’s impulse buying. Sure, you’ll save $1.35 if you clip that coupon and buy Cheeze Wheeze, but if your family doesn’t already eat Cheeze Wheeze, and you don’t buy it, you’ll save $4.87! 

3. Know what you already have. If your kitchen cabinets are bursting with cans, boxes, and bags, and you can’t even see the back of your refrigerator shelves (let’s not even talk about the freezer), you may be wasting money buying stuff you already have, while that stuff expired six years ago and is still taking up shelf space. Forget spring cleaning, get a start on winter kitchen cleaning now. Tackle one cabinet or refrigerator shelf at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed. Pull out everything and set it on the counter, table, or floor. Sort into three piles: what’s gone bad, what’s still good, and what you’re really never going to use even if it is still good. Toss the stuff that’s gone by, making a note of anything you need to replace. Pack up the stuff you’re never going to use—that jar of lemon curd Aunt Martha gave you, the can of hominy you bought because you remembered having hominy as a child, but haven’t been able to bring yourself to actually open, the gourmet tomato-pepper pasta you got for Christmas that you know you’ll never eat—and take it to your church or bank or local food bank or wherever there’s a food drive. Now, inventory what’s left. Challenge yourself to think of meals you can prepare that will use that bag of stuffing or box of frozen spinach. Stores you already have are like money in the bank. 

4. Use the oldest stuff first. Once you know what you have, sort it by expiration date. Don’t let any more food go to waste! If you have one can of kidney beans that expires in a week and one that won’t expire ’til next year, make chili with the oldest can. Organize your stores so the oldest stuff is in the front of the cabinets rather than the back. Yes, it is a real pain, since that means you have to pull stuff out and reorganize every time you shop for staples. But on the plus side, it keeps you up-to-date with what you have in addition to saving money. You’ll never buy something you already have again!

5. Read the sales sheets. Every Friday, we get a free ”Weekender” edition of our local paper that includes sales brochures from the big groceries near us. Take the time to go through these and see what’s on sale this week, again focusing on food and other products you actually use. This is not only a good way to plan your menus for the week, it’s a great way to shop for staples that you need but that aren’t time-valued, like canned goods. Stock up when they’re on sale! Our friend Ben and I are big on salads, but those greens can be expensive, so I always look for “buy one, get one free” or “two for $3″ sales and try to buy a couple of kinds on sale—checking carefully for freshness—to mix together for a more interesting, flavorful salad. (Buying a bag of salad on sale helps offset the price of favorite salad extras like peppers and scallions, too.) 

6. Make a list and check it twice. Once you know what you already have and what you need to replenish, you know what’s on sale this week at your local grocery, you’ve clipped your coupons, and you’ve planned the week’s menus, you’re ready to make your grocery list. Do not, ever, go to the grocery without a list. Not only does list-less shopping lead to impulse buying and wasteful spending, since you’re bound to forget what’s on sale, but if you forget necessities and have to go back, you’ll be wasting gas and time.

7. Shop with a calculator. On Saturday, I was thrilled to see a woman shopping at our local grocery with her calculator in hand. It’s incredibly easy to rack up twice the amount of money you’d planned to spend on groceries, even if you think you’re being careful. There’s nothing like that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when the cashier announces the total and it’s way more than you’d expected. A calculator is an easy way to avoid sticker shock. Determine a realistic budget (it won’t help you to decide that you’ll spend $15 on groceries every week if you really can’t feed your family for less than $115), add each new item’s price on your calculator as you put it in your cart, bag, or basket, and get the total. When you’ve reached your spending limit, if you still have items left to buy, you’ll need to prioritize: Return the ones that can realistically wait another week to the shelf or bin and replace them with the items you really need now. 

8. Buy generic. I was brought up to believe that brands were as essential to shopping as the products themselves. You bought Coca-Cola or Hellman’s Mayonnaise or White Cloud Toilet Tissue or Black Diamond Cheddar, and that was that. And yes, I still believe that Coca-Cola tastes different (and better) than any other cola, that Hellman’s tastes better than other brands of mayo, and that Kleenex is softer than other facial tissues. So if I’m buying a brand where the flavor or texture matters, I wait for sales and stock up (why pay $1.89 for a 2-liter bottle of Coke when you can get it for $1?). But I have retrained myself to look for deals when the outcome is the same. If the store brand of canned veggies or cheese or sour cream or butter is acceptable, if I can find an absorbent paper towel at a great price, if I see that The Queen of Clean endorses low-cost Purex as a great detergent that’s as effective as the pricier brands, well, I listen up. Buying the generic or low-cost brands of most things helps justify spending money on the brand-name stuff you feel really does matter.    

9. Buy big—when it makes sense. Stores around here have whole aisles devoted to “family-sized” products, from huge cans of tomato sauce and corn to giant jars of pickles and bags of rice the size of Texas. And every store has huge multi-packs of paper towels, toilet paper, and other paper products on sale. Even the produce section succumbs to the “bigger is better” mentality, with huge packs of mushrooms and giant bags of salad greens. When does it make sense to buy these, and when should you pass them up? If you have the storage space, buying big on imperishables like paper products, soap, and detergent always makes sense—as long as the big packs are really a bargain. Make sure you check first! If you have a large family and know you could really use that giant can of baked beans or ten-pack of pizzas or 2-pound chunk of cheese before it goes bad, go for it (again, only after comparing the bulk price to the cost of smaller containers). You can often justify luxuries like black olives or maraschino cherries if you buy them in the giant cans or jars, but you need to be able to split them up and store them in smaller containers in the fridge until you’re ready for them. Do you have the space? Ditto for big freezer bags of vegetables and fruit. If your family can eat a whole bag at a sitting, or eat half at one meal and the rest later in the week, good deal! Otherwise, stick to the smaller size and avoid waste. Always check before you buy, even if your family is large, to make sure the super size is really cheaper. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it’s not. And remember to buy what you really use! I’ll buy a big box of mushrooms if they’re on sale, since mushroom lovers like our friend Ben and I can certainly eat them within the week. But if they’re not on sale, the smaller boxes are often (surprisingly) a better deal. Sometimes whole mushrooms are cheaper, and sometimes sliced mushrooms are. It pays to actually look rather than just buying the same thing every time. 

10. Walk the aisles and stay alert. Believe it or not, generic and store brands aren’t always cheaper than name brands. This past Saturday, I was in a small local grocery and needed to get some zipper-closing plastic bags. I went to the appropriate aisle and did some comparison shopping. The generic brand had a big tag announcing that it was on sale—you could get 120 bags for only $2.79, a 32-cent savings! And needless to say, even at full price it was way cheaper than the name-brand products. I put two boxes in my basket. As it happened, I needed to get a loaf of bread for our chickens (we buy cheap loaves of bread to supplement their diet in the winter, since, unlike us, they could use the extra calories), so I went to a different part of the store. And there, on an end rack, I saw that 120-bag boxes of Ziploc bags were on sale for $1.99 a box! Good grief. To say the least, this experience taught me a lesson. The Ziploc bags were not anywhere near the bag aisle. Had I not happened to need chicken bread, I would never have seen them and would have thought I was getting a great deal by buying generic. Instead, I got a far better deal with the name brand! From now on, I plan to walk the aisles when I’m grocery shopping to make sure I don’t miss something. But this could expose me to expensive impulse buying, so I’ll have my list in hand and avoid anything that’s not on it.

That’s it for today’s frugal tips! Plase let me know if you have any grocery-shopping secrets that I’ve overlooked. These days, we all need all the help we can get!

         ‘Til next time,

                   Silence