Groceries Part 3: looking to the future

I have been so proud of myself the last few months for saving half on our grocery bill that I can't stop telling people about it. But I've been slowly realizing that I'm only making a dent in the grocery bill. Apparently, stock-piling is where the true money-savings lie.

Here's what the "experts" recommend: When there is a crazy sale going on for a particular item you would normally, instead of buying just one or two, buy a ton. The strategy here is to only purchase most of the items you buy at a deep discount. So when you buy a ton of that item, you're buying enough to last till the next time it's on sale. This way you never buy it for full price.

I haven't been stock piling yet but I guess I did try once. About a month ago Safeway had a coupon in their circular for pasta (I can't remember the brand) at $0.59 each. Normally pasta sales are 10 for $10 so this coupon was a lot cheaper than their normal sales. The coupon let me buy up to 6 boxes of pasta at a time, so I did. I have no idea when this sale will happen again but I think if I was smarter, I would have gone back, picked up another circular at the front of the store, and purchased 6 more really cheap boxes of pasta. Because this is the only example of my attempt at stock-piling I was really excited to have so much pasta. This means I made A LOT of pasta dishes so we ran through our "stock pile" of pasta really quick.

So now that I understand what I'm supposed to do: stock pile, then I can start to make a conscious effort to slowly build it up. I remember reading somewhere that it takes about 3 months to build a complete stockpile. I'm going to start this week with butter. We use Smart Balance which is on sale at Giant for $2.50. I have a Giant coupon from months ago and when I was at my parents last week, I cut out a few (my parents get 2 local newspapers delivered) Smart Balance coupons. So my plan is to my around 6 tubs of butter and freeze the excess (I just learned recently thanks to my boyfriend's mom that you can freeze butter). Maybe next week I can stock up on something else that we use and then maybe some day we'll have a decent stock pile to brag about.