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lal9905
member
Grocery Stores - where to shop "cheaply?"
lal9905
member
DH and I are merging our double-income-no-kids...to 1.25 income with 1 baby on the way...need to scale back our grocery shopping expenses...where do you find find the best deals? (mind you, I'm new to the Twin Cities and just set foot in a Rainbow for the first time yesterday) Do you shop at multiple stores for discounts?
Thanks.
LL
www.aModernFamily.blogspot.com
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Re: Grocery Stores - where to shop "cheaply?"
we do not have one near us, so i have not been in, but i have heard that Aldi can be great for grabbing some items inexpensively, and then you can do the rest of your shopping if you dont get everything there, somewhere else.
maybe you already do this - but just throwing it out there. i spend SO much less money in the grocery store when i actually plan out meals for the week. i took time and printed or wrote out index cards that tell me exactly what i need for certain meals and i just go through and buy the stuff off those cards - making sure i can overlap ingredients and looking at what is on sale and what meals will be the least expensive for the week ahead.
Do you use coupons? I love coupons. We get the sunday paper just for coupons. You can get good ones online too.
Food is one of the things I don't skimp on money-wise usually even if it's expensive (but we're still dual income). I just think it's so important to your health. Even if we don't have a coupon, or have a coupon for something I wouldn't usually by, I stick to certain foods. I'm also really weird about organic/local/fresh foods. The farmers market is an AWESOME place to get a ton of fresh veggies for a good price - you can even haggle. And if you plan out your recipes like pp said and then freeze a portion, you can get really good deals. There's a farmers market downtown st paul and one in minneapolis.
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Aldi is probably the cheapest place to buy food, but I've never been there.
I primarily buy local/organic, and I shop at a co-op (there are lots of great co-ops in the area). I've noticed that meal planning helps to keep costs down because you buy just what you need and nothing goes to waste. Another thing is to just prepare cheap food. I started eating more vegetarian food or at least vegetable based foods, which seems to save money too.
If you coupon-shop, Rainbow matches coupons up to $1 on Wednesdays (and sometimes on Saturdays), so that is a great way to save money.
Thanks girls, great ideas! I think meal planning could be helpful. I forgot about farmers markets...I LOVE getting fresh, local produce - so we'll be better off eating that anyways.
My plan for June is to freeze a bunch of dinner dishes to have ready for the month of August when our LO arrives.
Aldi is a great choice for shopping cheap. Bring your own bag for your groceries! Also, they used to be cash only. I don't know if that's changed or not.
Rainbow will double the first five coupons (up to $1 per coupon) on Wed or Sat. Plus, if you sign up for the Rainbow Rewards program, you can earn money off gas at local BP stations in increments of $.05 per $50 spent in the store. I've saved over $1 off per gallon before!
Watch the Cub ads for the buy 1 get 1 free meat deals. They rotate through chicken, pork and beef products.
Target will let you apply 1 manufacturer coupon and 1 Target coupon per item you purchase. This is awesome when you start buying diapers! If you have a baby registry at Target, you will get on their mailing list for coupons.
Speaking of diapers, if you sign up to buy diapers online at amazon.com, you get up to 30% off your first order, depending on what the promotion is. They will let you cancel your account and then sign up again as a new customer multiple times allowing you to use the new customer promotion over and over again. Bonus is your diapers are delivered to your door.
You can also get good deals on food prices at Super Walmart.
Finally, look at the Pocket Your Dollars website. They have a weekly shopping list where they coordinate all the coupons in the Sunday paper with the weekly sales at various stores. This is especially helpful if you plan your meals in advance.
I maybe be in the minority, but I hate Aldi. It just doesn't work for me.
I use Rainbow, Cub, Festival, Sam's Club, and local farmers markets to get out food. I usually skim the shopping lists on pocket your dollars to see what store is worth going to that week. If there are amazing deals, I might do two stores, but usually not.
Target sometimes has good deals too if you match Target coupons up with mfg coupons.
For us, we've figured out the best way to cut costs is to stock up on the non-perishables we use regularly when they go on sale.
My Mom got a Costco membership recently and we've started splitting bulk items. They have amazing produce. You have to know your prices to shop for deals though. Some things are way cheaper and others are pretty comparable.
Meal planning and shopping the perimeter of the store will help keep costs down as well. I do my big grocery shops at Cub (just personal preference, the Rainbow by me is dirty and doesn't have a lot of the brands I like).
I make a list and then attack my Mom's Sunday paper for coupons and then do an online search for other coupons. The most I have ever saved with coupons is $30 bucks.
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Aldi is great for purchasing necessities, but they are smaller and you can't always count on them having everything you will need for a recipe. That said, it is where I do most of my shopping, but I can't go there exclusively
I do my menu planning based on the weekly ads from Rainbow/Cub/Aldi. I will usually go to Aldi first and get everything on my list that I can, then go to Rainbow or Cub depending on who has the better deals that week. Also, Rainbow has Fuel Perks points, so I try to go there whenever I can since it helps me safe a little bit on gas.
I also have a membership to Sam's Club, which comes in handy for bulk items - but we also use it for diapers and wipes. This is also where I buy most of my meat. I get the large bulk packages, then split it up when I get home and freeze it. They're pretty good on produce too, but I find the quantities to sometimes be more than what DH and I can eat before it goes bad. I do like their quality though.
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I'll 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) the meal planning, but the one thing that we have started to do lately, which has really helped, is to shop with cash only. We don't bring our debit cards to the store with us, and I use the calculator on my phone and every item that goes in to the cart, I add up, and make sure to stop about $5 before we run out of our available cash (yesterday I went with $80 and ended up spending $81.75 so I needed a little extra). It really helps to limit the impulse buying which can really raise the total of your bill.
Good luck!!!
We shop Aldi for everything except dairy and meat. We go to a local meat place that only uses local animals and no pesticides.
Aldi accepts Credit/Debt Cards
We shop Walmart/Cub for dairy, bakery items, and baby food.
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It looks like from your avatar that you moved from Chicago? We moved here from Evanston almost 4 years ago. I don't know how new you are to the area, but groceries as a whole seem to be MUCH cheaper than I ever spent while living in Chicago.
I don't shop aldi. When trying to save money, we did some shopping at SuperWalmart. It is definitely the cheapest from what I found, and ditto that Cubs has buy one get one deals.
Now we shop at SuperTarget/Costco. THe nice thing about SuperTarget is that I like their store brands (archer farms or market pantry) - - and I won' t buy walmart's store brand. So SuperT ends up being cheaper. I also go to Trader Joe's at least once a month for unique things.
As far as costco, we now buy quite a lot there...chicken, veggies, bananas, other produce, cleaning supplies, greek yogurt, Milk, OJ, cereal, laundry detergent.
We saved a lot of money also by cloth diapering and making our own baby food as well. We bought a lot at the local farmer's markets as well.
I went to Rainbow this saturday and bought $115 worth of groceries for $66 out of pocket..:O)
ALDI is horrible....most of their items are processed foods and their produce as really gone down hill. IMO
I follow pocketyourdollars.com and they make weekly coupon match ups with the ads and a few other deals :O)
HTH
Ariel06 - I hate Aldi's too.
I'll send previous poster's recommendation.
Every other Sunday ad has a bigger coupon stash. This past Sunday was the smaller coupon paper, next Sunday's will have the bigger amount...FYI
I never shop at Rainbow, even with double coupon day because their prices in general are more expensive (on most items). Cub can have some good deals too-their little circular booklet that comes or just download it on their website based on your area.
I am a Supertarget FREAK and they tend to be the cheapest on most pantry items. I shop Kowalskis or Byerlys or the meat market for my lunch meats, meats and deli items...but I know that can add up. And she's right-you can combine coupons - always go to www.supertarget.com and see what coupons they have on there.
Farmer's Market is AWESOME....I prefer Mpls over St Paul even though I live in St Paul b/c the St Paul one (at least in prior years) has less fruit produce over veggie produce.
Meal planning is a huge deal. HUGE. I'll say, buy chuck steak or sirloin steak-put it in the crockpot with potatos, mixed veggies, and lipton soup mix for beef stew; along with rolls - and if I don't eat it, i'll freeze it and use mashed potatos a few weeks later for sheperd's pie --- etc. I always use one meal's leftovers to create something different (the homemade marinara sauce for spaghetti one day; chicken parmigiana a few weeks later using the same sauce)....
GL
Thanks everyone! I appreciate the warm welcome...and all of the ideas. I was affraid Rainbow was higher on staples. I did start shopping after meal planning this week and I think I'll be able to see a difference with that alone...but the pocket your dollars site looks great.
Thanks again!