Grocery Shopping Woes and Wins

I went grocery shopping at 2 stores today and although I didn't have to go in the rain this time, it was very time consuming. I actually spend about  3 hours from the time I left my apartment to the time I got home. Grocery shopping has been an issue for us since we moved to DC because we haven't been fortunate enough to have a grocery store near us. And because we do not have a car in the city, it's been hard to find a system that works.

Initially we used a service that delivered our groceries right to our kitchen. I absolutely loved it. I thought it was one of the best parts about living in a city. But having groceries delivered to your house means you pay slightly more for some of the items you buy and it means you pay a fee of around $8.00 plus tip for the delivery person. The other method we used initially was to rent a car. We joined a local car sharing program called Zipcar which charges to use one of their cars by the hour. You can usually rent a car for around $8 an hour so it was even cheaper to rent a car than to have groceries delivered. Still, paying $8 just to get groceries is kind of ridiculous so we started walking the mile to the nearest grocer store and sort of making a day out of it every other weekend. We would hit up about 2 or 3 grocery stores that were within a few blocks from each other to make the trip worth our while.
Since we moved about 2 months ago to a new neighborhood I've been taking the metro or bus to that same area with the 3 stores and then metro-ing back home. This entire trip takes way more time than I want to spend grocery shopping. I could just go to one store and come home in about an hour but I figure if I'm going to be going out there already, I might as well make the most out of my trip. I've started going grocery shopping every week just so I can catch the best deals offered every week. Maybe I'll go back getting groceries every other week, or since I'm going every week anyway, maybe I'll just choose one store each week to visit. Either way I can't keep spending 3 hours grocery shopping every week. Ugh, I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Anyway, I did continue on my stock piling mission today. Safeway had a special on peanut butter: $0.99 for a jar. I bought 4 (the limit you could buy) so I think we should be good on peanut butter for the next 6 months at least. I was also extremely proud of myself because I scored 6 cans of Progresso soup for $0.63 each. Giant had them on sale for $1.00 and I had printed a coupon that took off $1.10 if you buy 3. I did really great at Giant actually. My total before the sales and coupons was $25.47, and after the savings, I walked out paying $12.01. That;s more than 50% off!!!!!! :)

(photo: Dan4th, flickr) 

Starting to stock pile!

I went to Safeway and Giant today in the rain! Or should I say in the mist. Yes, it mists in the city. It's very weird (I'm from Florida where when it rains you can feel it). Anyway, we were out of all produce so I had to go grocery shopping today. I went to Safeway where I bout 6 non-dairy milks(Soy Dream and Rice Dream) for $1.50 each. We usually can't find any for less than $2.00. I had also bought 6 of these milks the other day too so I guess this is technically my second shot at stock piling. I think we go through 2 milks per month and these non-dairy milks do not need to be refrigerated until the're opened so they have a pretty long shelf life. Then I went to Giant and bought 6 tubs of Smart Balance. They were on sale for $2.50 and I had 3 coupons for a dollar off of 2. So I paid $2.00 for each instead of the usual $3.00. Apparently you can't freeze Smart Balance but we usually go through one tub a month (I think) and the expiration date for them is a while from now. I also saw chocolate chips on sale for a dollar cheaper than normal so I bought 4 packs. We usually don't go through many chocolate chips around here but I do crave homemade chocolate chip cookies every now and then.

All in all I think I just purchased six months worth of:
Milk: paid: $18.00 , saved: $15.32
Butter: paid: $12.00, saved: $5.92
Chocolate chips: paid: $11.16, saved: $3.20

Total paid: $41.16
Total saved: $24.44

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.

Groceries Part 2: the new way

Although the old way of doing the groceries had worked for us for a few years, we both came to the conclusion that we could go about it smarter. Believe it or not, we were spending $400 every month on groceries- for just 2 people! I know prices are a little more expensive in D.C. but $400/month was still over the top.

I'm not sure where I got new ideas for how to do the groceries, whether it was from a blog, a podcast, or a book, but they have worked wonders. I've been doing a few new things.

1) I started a price book. I know I got this tip from a book I read called "Your Money or Your Life". The purpose of a price book is to get an idea of how much things are and how to spot a good price. So you take a notebook and divide it up by each letter in the alphabet. On each page you will create columns for the name of the grocery store, the date, the item, the size and brand of the item, the price, and the unit price (you can find templates online to print out). You then write this information down in the notebook while you're in the grocery store, or you can do it when you get home by looking at the receipt and the groceries you bought. This takes a little bit of time, but after a while you will get an idea of how much things are. Remember in Part 1, we used to do groceries without really looking at prices, not anymore. After a while (a couple months) you will start to notice patterns in the price of an item at a particular store. So pasta may go for $0.69 at Safeway every six weeks.

2) I look at the weekly circulars for the grocery stores in my area. I don't actually have a grocery store near me (the joys of living in a city), but I do have metro access to several different chain grocery stores. It's actually worked to our benefit to not have one store that we shop at because it leaves us open to go to the store that's having the best sales that week. So what I usually do is go online and go to the store's website and pull their weekly circular and I'll take a giant legal-sized pad and a pen and I'll write down the name of the store and list each item that I want to buy and the price. With my price book, I can tell if an item that's advertised as being on sale, is truly on sale.

3) I develop a meal plan. I LOVE to plan things so making a plan for what we'll be eating the next week or two is actually fun for me. First, I go shopping in my kitchen. I walk a few feet into my kitchen, look in the refrigerator, in the cabinets, in the freezer and I take note of what I already have. Then I look at the sales I've written down from the circulars and I begin to write down dinners I can make with what I already have and what's for sale. I try to write 2 weeks worth of dinners on the same piece of paper that I wrote the sales on. Then I write down my grocery list (on the same piece of paper). I use my meal plan to decide how many of a certain item I will need. So if I'm going to be making tacos and pasta with a side salad in a week, I know I'm going to need 1 onion and maybe 3 tomatoes. This way I'm not just guessing how much produce I will need and risking it going bad.

So you can see we've pretty much done away with the running grocery list. Following these methods have definitely helped us not only save money, but save time. I have an entire 2 weeks worth of dinners to pick from every night. I know I have all of the ingredients so I'm not metro-ing to the grocery store and we're not getting take-out because we don't know what to make for dinner. I've been doing the groceries this way for about 3 months and we are now spending around $200 every month! As I keep learning about how to save money on groceries I'm improving my strategy. Next time I'll talk about the direction I'm trying to go in with buying groceries because I think it will help us save even more.

Groceries Part 1: the old way

Lately I've been readjusting our grocery shopping methods to try to get the most bang for our grocery buck. When we first moved in together we came up with a system of keeping a running list on the refrigerator door. So as we ran out of something, we would write it down, then we would take the list with us to the grocery store and buy what was on the list. This worked really well for us because we wouldn't forget things to buy (because we had a list).

Although this worked on the surface, underneath there were many problems with this method. First, we weren't very disciplined to sticking with what was on the list. The items on the list were the things we knew we were going to buy. But everything else in the store was optional. My boyfriend actually enjoyed going to the grocery store because it was a place to find new things to try. Of course anyone will tell you going to the grocery store and viewing it as a free-for-all is not a good way to save money.
Second, we would buy the items on our list regardless of the price. We might switch brands or buy generic if we bothered to look at the price, but either way, we would buy it if it was on the list.
This brings me to the third problem. Remember, the only reason the items were on the list was because they had been in the refrigerator, not because we planned on using them. We often bought things (produce) that would go bad before we got around to eating them. You know what we'd do after throwing them out? PUT IT ON THE LIST!

Now that we have financial goals and try to give purpose to the money we bring in, we have had to pay attention to the money we spend. Next time I'll share what our newest method is and how we've cut back our grocery budget by half.