About a year ago, I picked up a matching black, velour workout set by Calvin Klein at Sam’s Club on the clearance. The set consists of a pair of yoga pants and a zip-up hoodie.

When I bought the set, the first thing I had to do was to cut off nearly four inches from the bottom of the pants as I stand a whopping 5 ft 2 inches tall and while I am used to pants being on the long side, these completely covered my shoes. I’ll admit, the pants were a little more snug than I’d anticipated and the jacket zipped, though it was shorter than most tops that I wear. When I attempted to wear the set together, the jacket lifted when I raised my arms up.

I love the look and feel of this set, soft and comfortable. I’ve worn the pieces separately, wearing the pants at least once per week and the top I’ve worn as a jacket with other clothes.

In the last year, I’ve dropped 30 pounds, lost 6 inches from my hips, 4 inches from my chest and 7 inches from my waist. I noticed recently that I am now walking on the bottoms of the pants as they’ve grown longer as I’ve shrunk and I have to keep pulling them up while working out in them, the waistband is barely stretched when I wear them. I could wear the next lower size if I had them available.

Despite that, when I put the pants on with the jacket and I have the same problem that I did a year ago when I bought the set, the middle is left a little breezy… it fits fine as long as I don’t move my arms. When I do that, however, the jacket lifts up and my belly is exposed. When the pants are pulled up as far as they go, the jacket hits nearly exactly at the waistline, giving about an inch of overlap. It’s not as though I am only flashing my midsection when I do some complicated yoga stretching pose here, the jacket lifts up when I do something like reach my arm to the side table to get a sip out of a glass of water. I could stand to lop off an additional two inches off the bottom of the pants at this point, too.

I cannot help but wonder who the hell this outfit was built for. Who was the size model? Where are these women, whose legs require an additional six inches in length, but whose torso is three, four, five inches shorter than mine? I don’t run into this problem with all clothes… it’s not me who is ill-proportioned, it’s the clothing!

I try to imagine this woman and all I can come up with is a chunky midget on stilts.

I got my $6 worth out of the set by wearing the pieces separately, despite the fact that neither fit right. The jacket got a lot of use during campfire season because it’s just warm enough and the campfire smoke washes out easily. The bottoms are a little on the worn-out side due to their extreme level of comfort.

If I didn’t work from home, this set would have been a total waste of $6 for me. The moral of the story is to try on, try on, try on and return, return, return. It’s no savings if it sits in the back of your closet unworn.

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What are you buying?

I bought crap. I didn’t plan it that way, but that’s what I got.

Every year, discount stores put out shelf after shelf of lovely soap gift baskets. The packaging styles often echo other high-quality brand names that you would normally find in department or specialty stores. The baskets range in size from just a trio of soaps to massive boxed sets. They tend to be priced at $5-$20 – precisely the gift limit for a lot of smaller gift exchanges.

I’d never been given one of these gifts nor have I ever given one. I am quite practical though, so I’ve always been curious.

I picked up a few of these at Meijer a few days after Christmas at 75% off. I toyed with the idea of buying several and stashing them away for last-minute gifts throughout the year, but my cheap gene wouldn’t let me do it. I picked out a few that I thought I would like, thinking maybe if they were awesome I’d regret it and rush back to the store and get more.

My cheap gene saved me money, in this instance. The stuff was crap. One thing that I bought was a bottle of soap and the matching lotion in a little wrought-iron holder type thing to place next to my kitchen sink. I actually put back one of those Softsoap dispensers and bought this instead. The Softsoap was like $1.50 or something and this thing was closer to $2. Not a spectacular deal, but I was itching to try this stuff.

The hand soap doesn’t lather up. It doesn’t smell like soap. The dispenser squirts out these red lumps of non-soap that reminded me of jelly, except it didn’t smell as good as jelly and it just slid off my hands. Washing my hands with actual jelly would have resulted in cleaner hands because I’d rinse much better and there would be little worry that I was using some sort of Chinese toxic-waste napalm.

The matching lotion is on par with these value tubs where you get three year’s worth of lotion for $1 – not high-quality stuff. The best part was that the funky scent didn’t linger at all and my skin didn’t burst out in sores, so there’s that.

It’s not a total loss; the bottles are cute so maybe I’ll refill them with good stuff.

The other item I tried out was one of these large gift boxes with body wash, bubble bath, body scrub, hand soap, lotion, even a body poof thingee – seemed practical enough. It cost me $3. My first disappointment was unwrapping the stuff. What I thought were two little bars of hand soap turned out to be empty cardboard spacers that just happened to be in the shape and size of a bar of soap. I tried out all three of the body products in the shower and not one of them lathered up with a body poof thingee. A tiny dab of cheapie Suave body wash lathered up in the poof as anticipated.

This stuff looked like it was going to dye my skin. The kit came with soap roses – delicate soap carved out like rose petals. One of these petals fell to the bathroom floor and must have gotten wet because now I have soap cement stuck to my floor. I can’t seem to wipe it up. You know soap is bad when I am considering ripping out a tile and replacing it.

I am sooo glad that I opened these piece-o-shit would-be gifts at home and found out how awful they really are. I can’t imagine giving this to someone as a gift. If I want to give a practical soap gift, handing someone a plastic grocery store bag with a few cheap body washes would be a step up. Sad, huh?

Now the day I bought these items, the clearance section was full of women elbowing each other to get to this crap. A teacher out there will open up one of these as a gift on the last day of school… several will be dispersed on Mother’s Day… some poor woman will sit confused after receiving this with a card that read, “Just thinking of you!”

I am all for clearance deals, but make sure you check yourself this clearance season. Ask yourself why you are buying something. Is it useful? It’s the elementary question that the woman who hit me with her cart to get to these things never asked herself. Unfortunately, just because the wrapper says “soap”, doesn’t mean you can trust it.

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I took my kids in for their annual eye exam yesterday and the results were just as I had expected: my son failed his eye exam (miserably) and my daughter’s eensy teeny tiny, barely-there prescription didn’t change a bit. Our insurance only covers an annual eye exam and frames + lenses every two years, unless you have a significant change, as my son did.

While he picked out his eyeglass frames, I asked the optician for a copy of my daughter’s prescription. The doctor, who had a great repertoire with the kids, asked if she was going to pick out new frames. The optician quickly explained that without a change in vision, the insurance would not cover it. He was confused about wanting a copy of the prescription.

I have a difficult time lying so I blurted out, “We will order her some $6.95 glasses from zennioptical.com.”

The only way to describe the look on the eye doctor’s face is: total disgust. His reaction was as expected; this is an argument he cannot win and is too smart to get into.

First, there’s the math problem:

Average price of designer eyeglass frames: $150

Average price of single-vision eyeglass lenses: $50

If you stop there, you’ve spent $200 on a pair of glasses and I’ll bet you the optician gets you for at least ONE upsell. You might go for the the extended warranty or the kit of special cleaning cloths or a trendy little eyeglass case. I would think the average cost of eyeglasses, not counting the exam, sits somewhere around $250.

Opticians are a pushy bunch of people. I am not sure most understand that they are salespeople, but oh, they are. Opticians are some of the slickest salespeople out there. They look like medical professionals in their white lab coats, throwing around the occasional medical-sounding term, but don’t be fooled. Their costume is designed to give an air of authority where they really have none. When they tell you how necessary the anti-reflective, UV-blocking, chemically-processed coating is… just pretend you are buying a car and they are offering you that under car rust-inhibiting spray. Listen to the pitch: if you don’t get the special spray, your car will rust out and you’ll spend a ton on replacing everything. Or, if you don’t get this chemical process on your lenses, your corneas will get scratched and you could go blind. Let your mind wander: if this shit is so damn vital, why isn’t isn’t it just included? The answer is that it is NOT vital. It’s just that this salesman will hammer on you with it continuously until you say yes because it’s the biggest spiff in his pocket.

The other side of the equation:

$250/$6.95 = 35

For the same price, you could order 35 pair of glasses. That only sounds super indulgent because the optical dispensary has been raping you (and your grandma) for as long as you can remember with 90% markups.

The optical dispensary cannot compete with zennioptical.com. When you buy from zenni, you order direct from China; there’s no guarantee that Ralph Lauren or Candie’s or Gucci frames are manufactured in the US. The optical dispensary takes 7-10 days to order my new glasses in; Zenni takes two-three weeks – well worth the wait in my opinion, for the amount of savings. I know you ask yourself, “What happens if my glasses break?” Plan ahead and order more pairs of glasses than you need. It’s simple.

While the optician has a slight edge in that they can adjust frames to fit your face better, the Zenni pairs are so cheap that if they keep sliding down my nose, I can just throw them the fuck away.

To be fair, we’d spent the half hour waiting for our appointment trying on all of the high-dollar, designer frames. The intention was never to pick something out to order that day, but to find which styles we liked to order them for 90% off online. I think that the opticians and eye doctor both noticed that we’d wandered into the high-profit area of the store. Surely they were in the back room rubbing their mitts together, declaring their victory on selling us – who probably had a freshly loaded medical spending account – as much as possible. Easy prey really, a little bit of scare goes a long way when upselling warranties (“We have kids in here daily who break their glasses and need them repaired”), coatings (“Your child’s health is very important, you don’t want his eyeballs to rust out of his head, do you?”) and accessories (“Don’t use mere window cleaner on your glasses! Use this $4/ounce special spray that buffs away scratches and eliminates wrinkles.”)

Soon enough, opticians will find a way to scare you out of ordering glasses online. Perhaps they’ll tell you about the Ryerson boy whose cheapskate parents opted for the online pair, the pair from China, only to find out that he had an inoperable brain tumor the cause of which is still unknown. I mean, *shrug*, clinically they cannot say that the Chinese import eyeglasses caused it but they can’t prove that it didn’t, either. Wink, nod, smile. “So who is picking out frames today!”

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I know that many of you have been hitting the stores this week, and will be in the coming weeks in hopes of getting a fabulous clearance deal. I mean, everyone you’ve ever known you’d call thrifty talks about clearance deals, so it’s one sure-fire way to save money, right?

Wrong.

You have really got to watch what you are doing. The word “clearance” is overused. It used to mean that a store was clearing away product, wanted it gone fast, and was willing to mark it down big to make that happen. Now, meh, it kinda means that, but stores are smart. They aren’t going to mark it down 75% when shoppers will take things off the shelf at 30% off. There’s no sense in making unnecessary, drastic cuts when so many people go insane at the very mention of the word ‘clearance.’

Post-Christmas sales are the worst in big box stores. The next holiday is Valentine’s Day, and that takes up very little space. It’s also still the height of winter so there’s plenty of time to gradually replace winter jackets and sweaters with bikinis and tank tops. There’s really no rush to get all that holiday stuff off the racks and shelves.

Before Christmas, I went into the holiday section and looked around at the ornaments, gift wrap, gift boxes, etc. Everything that day was 40% off. This past Saturday, the day after Christmas, that section was 50% off and there were so many people and carts it looked like a war zone. Yesterday, at that same Meijer, and where the holiday trees and things once were was vast, open space and what was left was only a shelf or two. Everything was still at 50% off.

It went that fast because the sign said ‘clearance’ and because it’s clearance shopping season. Sometimes I wonder if the guys in the back room at Meijer watch through those cameras with bowls of popcorn with psychology professors and just laugh… “Watch this sir! We have an extremely limited selection, the holiday is over, and we’re going to create a sense of urgency to buy this stuff  by simply using the color orange and using the word clearance, and marking down a mere  10% more!”

Years ago, when people didn’t look for clearance sales as they do now, and back when stores ordered far more than they needed, there were deals. Weeks after Christmas, there’d still sit bins full of rosy cheeked Santa gift wrap and 90% off bows that just didn’t sell well during the actual season. This rarely happens anymore. You’ll find some rock bottom pricing at Walgreen’s, CVS, Rite-Aid. These places are severely limited in shelf and rack spacing.

5. Know where to shop.

You aren’t likely to get the best deal at Meijer, or Walmart, or Target, or KMart. You are likely to get the best deals at the mall or drug stores.

Last year, a cute Carter’s outfit caught my attention at JCPenney. Clearance price, $6! The same little outfit was at Meijer, but the clearance price there was $13. I started comparing the two types of stores and example after example, this rang true.  Watch yourself at the big box stores. They have more storage space, they can afford to stretch out clearance a little longer.

Big box stores often have things on clearance while similar items are on sale for a comparable price. Seriously, I was at Target once and found cereal on clearance for 15% off (laughable, I know) but the real shame was that the entire brand line of cereal was 25% off that week – it was cheaper to buy off the shelf than to buy the clearanced items. I’ve seen other examples of this on the Meijer grocery clearance rack. I don’t think it’s intentional, I think this happens when you have such a large store.

The rule of thumb I find true is, the bigger the store, the higher the clearance price.

4. Check the condition.

Stores often have an as-is type policy for clearance deals, so check out what you are buying before you pull out your wallet.

Last week, I had my son try on a winter coat at Meijer, price tag: $13! I made him zip it up, pull on the hood, the whole shebang. I was ready to throw it in the cart when I realized he was fumbling on the zipper. He couldn’t unzip it. I couldn’t unzip it. I checked the other coats on the rack – same problem. I saved myself $13 and the inconvenience and hassle of having to buy another coat just by taking a few moments in the store.

Try it on. Check out the cut. It’s not a jacket if it lifts above your navel when you lift your arms, it’s a burlap sack with arm holes and isn’t worth even the minuscule price on the tag unless you are going to re-craft the fabric for something useful. Check the elastics to see if they are weak.

You don’t always have to put it back on the rack, just know what you are getting into. I have a fabulous wool winter coat that I grabbed for $8 at one of those ‘take an additional % off’, and then ‘take another % off because it’s Tuesday’ type department sales. The original price tag was $279. The cut was perfect, but the buttons were falling off. This was acceptable to me. I am no seamstress and I have to re-attach these from time to time, but I knew I was getting into this when I bought the coat.

Don’t be shy about opening boxes or asking an employee to help you out, if it looks like an open box. In some cases, open box deals are wonderful – Best Buy is a reliable place for such things. I can’t trust your average KMart or WalMart employee to know if all the necessary components are still inside.

3. Buy what you know.

Unless you have been shopping for weeks for TV sets and you’ve compared brands, reviews/rating,  features and price, you shouldn’t get lured in by the words, ‘sale,’ ‘blowout’, ‘clearance.’ Least of all listen to Crazy Larry from TV or his sales people trying to tell you what a rock-bottom deal they can get you in, today only. There may be a suggested retail price of $1299 on the tag that makes the $399 orange tag look good, but you have no idea – this model could be obsolete or they could be selling all day long for $200 elsewhere.

If you don’t know it, don’t buy it until you do. The last thing you want to do is realize that what you bought all the children you know mp3 players that take batteries instead of charging through a USB port. Forty bucks in batteries later, you may realize that you saved nothing on your great purchase, and you spent more.

One year I found Tyco RC planes, cars, and boats on clearance at Toys R Us for $20-$25 each. As we’d purchased one the Christmas prior for over $100, I put several in my cart and on the spot planned out birthdays, father’s day gifts, the next coming holidays, etc., until I realized that these were the models that did not come with the battery. The batteries were $45 each. Those RC models went right back on the shelf.

Still, if there’s an awfully tempting deal in front of you and feel the need to buy now, then by all means, use your phone a friend option and call someone who does, or someone who can search online for you in a few seconds.

2. Put the ‘hunt’ back into bargain hunting.

Be wary of fresh clearance. It’s often the same price as a regular sale.

Find what you want and make decisions based on the information you have. If you see the jacket that caught your eye twice since last fall on the clearance rack and there’s 2 left in your size, but it’s only 40% off, you should probably pick it up. If it’s just a run of the mill red sweater that you know you’ll wear, but isn’t anything special and there’s dozens left in all sizes, wait. The price is much likely to fall lower.

Find your prey, stalk it, and pounce when it’s at it’s most vulnerable point.

1. Be practical.

No matter how low the price, do not listen the voice in your head that helps you justify bad purchases. You know the voice, it says things like,

“There are tons of occasions in which this puke green sweater dress with raspberry belt would be perfect for!” or,

“Those boots at that price? You can suffer through a mere half size too small without a problem!” or,

“Sure, your daughter isn’t into bright colors this year, but I am certain by this time next year she’ll totally be into neon colored pink camo snow suit.” or,

“I can wear wide leg pants.”

Buying stuff you don’t need negates any savings you think you got for the day. I see this crap all the time at thrift stores, brand new, with tags.

Always ask yourself… Do I need it? Will I really use/wear it? If there’s any hesitation, walk away and look at something else or go get a pretzel or something.

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Many people overlook drug stores for savings. I can understand why this is… drug stores tend to have a limited selection of items, they often carry upscale brands that come with higher price tags, and the sales circulars often are an odd collection of laxatives, Ace Bandage twin packs, .09 pencils and cans of sardines.

Beyond prescriptions and medical necessities, these stores are otherwise your impulse stop shopping bonanza. Russel Stover c andy. Hallmark cards. A Snuggie for your dog. Magazines. Four of the top 100 best sellers. Large print crossword puzzles. $9 toasters and Ped Egg refills.

If you chuckle because you find my description accurate, then you may be surprised to find that drug stores can save you hundreds of dollars per year!

I invite you to check out:

www.iheartriteaid.com

www.iheartwags.com

www.iheartcvs.com

These sites are the best resources I can find online with constantly updated information. It can be overwhelming if you’ve never bargain shopped at a drug store before.

Starting in January, I am going to start to highlight some of my drug store deals on this blog. I haven’t shopped at any of them in nearly a year as I’d stocked up enough razors, hair coloring, soap, body wash, shampoo/conditioner, toothpaste, etc., to last. My linen closet is getting a little low on inventory so I am going to start stocking up again.

In the meantime, check out those websites!

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Empty Fridge?

How not to shop…

I once shopped with a neighbor/relative who had some car trouble and needed a ride to the store. She had a food stamp budget of $600 for the month for a household with 6 people. The youngest child was an infant whose needs were taken care of with the WIC program. The other three children were in school. They received free breakfast and lunch there through the week. The other adult in the house worked and ate out five days per week. This was a month where there were no vacations from school, so let’s tally up the meals she was going to prepare, shall we?

Dinner for 2 adults, 4 children x 31

Lunch for 2 adults, 4 children on weekends x 8

Breakfast for 2 adults, 4 children on weekends x 8

Lunch for herself and 1 infant on weekdays x 20

67 meals to prepare for. She’s got $9 per meal to spend here, which I think is awfully generous considering that 20 of these meals are just herself and a baby. One could spend $15 per dinner meal and still have $135 leftover for cereal and lunch meat and bread for breakfast and lunches and eat really, really well.

This family, however, did not eat really well. They did not even eat decent. To be honest, they often ran out of food and had ‘borrow’ things from my house, or spend more money on food.

The reason? My sister-in-law could not plan ahead. She bought crap. She lacked the ability to see that food was a necessity every.single.day. I joke with my kids when they tell me they are hungry. I sometimes respond, “Didn’t I just feed you yesterday?” They get to laugh along because they know they aren’t going to go without a meal. Some kids don’t get that joke because the adults in their world can’t plan past today.

You can easily assume that the house was void of food when the first of the month rolled around when we did this shopping. I didn’t use coupons back then, but I had a strict weekly budget (I didn’t have food stamps) and lived tightly within it.

The first stop in the store was at a display with Pepsi two-liter bottles for .59. This was quite a loss leader! The limit was 10, so I piled 10 into my cart. My sister-in-law looked horrified. For a brief moment I thought that maybe she had a much healthier household than mine, but then I remembered that in fact, drank Pepsi. I had looked after her children while she ran to buy some in the past, as well as picked up some for her when I ran to the store. She made Pepsi runs all the time. She placed one in her cart.

It was my turn to be horrified. One? Really? When I asked her if she’d read the sign that said .59, just to be sure. She nodded. I quickly explained that this was going to be like a 3-4 week Pepsi supply for our house.  I didn’t quite understand, but we moved on.

We walked down the cereal aisle and I was thrilled to find store brand cereal on sale for $1. One dollar per box! Oh, this was awesome! The limit was 10, so I bought 10. I had store brand crisp rice to make cereal bar treats, store brand chex to make snack mix, and several boxes of my son’s then-favorite, which were the generic version of Cocoa Puffs. I would be set on cereal for weeks to come, plus, I was a bag of marshmallows and a bag of pretzels away from a few low-cost treats.

My neighbor asked her six year old son which box of cereal he’d like. He chose Lucky Charms. She tossed one single box into the cart. Small box, not on sale, $3. I quietly pointed out to her that for the $3, she could get 3 boxes of the store brand Lucky Charms and have enough to last a while. She didn’t really say anything, but I am pretty sure she rolled her eyes at me behind my back. I took the mental note that not everyone appreciates the store brand. I can respect that, though I can’t wrap my mind around why, with this many children, there was only a single box of cereal in the cart anyhow. I knew that at best, her children could decimate this box within three mornings with carefully poured bowls. At worst, also known as reality, the children who would have to fend for themselves and this box would last about half as long as the latest Harry Potter DVD.

Did I mention our distance from the grocery store? We lived nearly ten miles out. I had no comprehension of her resistance to stock up. Really. I had a Lewis Black moment of pound-fisting inner rage, followed by a screwed up angry face, followed by the blank look of a total lack of understanding. I wanted to scream, “HELLO! You don’t have a car to drive currently so, um, this may be it for a while!” while swatting her with a rolled up sales ad.

I attempted to console my inner frustration by thinking that maybe I’d watch her stock up on frozen waffles or boxed pancake mix or even a loaf of bread for toast, but I didn’t see her buy any of that stuff. She did, however, grab two bags of Hostess mini doughnuts at $2.50/bag. I often went to a Hostess outlet store that was literally a three-minute drive from the store we stood in. I casually mentioned to her that I’d been planning to make a stop there this week anyhow, and asked if she’d ever been there. She said that she had. I mentioned that we could make a stop there after we left this store. Despite the $1/bag doughnuts that awaited us at the next store, she left the pricey ones in the cart.

I decided I could no longer butt in and just let her shop without my scrutiny. Box upon box of snack crackers, bags of chips, tubs of ice cream, Lunchables. One dozen bakery made chocolate chip cookies for $5.99! $7/lb. deli meat. $6/lb. deli cheese. Cans of aerosol cheese flavored product at $4 a whack, in 4 different flavors. Nothing really tops a cheez cracker like a fake bacon flavored cheese turd out of a can. Yum. She spent more on fake cheese than I spent on meat to last for 3 weeks.

At the checkout I allowed myself to glance over her loot: I saw one pound of hamburger and one package of hot dogs. I tried to hide the quizzed look on my face because I regularly had her children over for dinner and I knew that one pound of hot dogs was just enough for the kids, if the adults weren’t eating. And one itty bitty pound of hamburger? WTF are you going to do with that for 7 people over the course of  a month? No flour, no sugar, no cans of vegetables, no frozen vegetables, no fresh fruit, no canned fruit, no family sized cans of soup, no pasta, no rice, no chicken, no buns… I couldn’t see any food staple item. Seriously, I couldn’t make a single meal of out what she’d bought, unless you chop up hot dogs real small and make a bun out of cheezy crackers and serve with a side of ice cream. That might make a mighty fine meal on Friday, but what will you eat the rest of the week?

The total at the checkout was over $400. Two carts, and nothing to prepare a single meal. After we loaded up my van and unloaded it all into her kitchen, she glanced at the clock and picked up the phone and told her husband to bring home a pizza for dinner.

Lo and behold, two weeks after eating their fill of crackers and ice cream, the inevitable knock on my door came … not for a cup of sugar, but asking if we had an extra loaf of bread to spare. I was also asked on several occasions for a quick ride down the street to the store where she could pick up a 2 liter of Pepsi (for $1.89) and a cold deli sandwich that was allowed on food stamps so that she could eat lunch. The $10 she spent on a single lunch would be enough to buy an entire pound of deli meat, a week’s worth of gourmet crusty french rolls and toppings to last an entire week.

I remember this shopping trip well because it was a huge inspiration for me of how not to shop. Ever.

She is an extreme case, but I think we can all learn something here. Her lack of planning was extreme and her spending was far out of control.

Grocery Shopping Basics…

1. Determine the length of time you are shopping for. Are you grocery shopping for a week? For a month? For a day or two?

2. Plan meals.

Make a list of what you would like to make for the period of time you are shopping for. This doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to have a 3 course meal each night. It’s okay to have a soup and sandwich night, but you can’t do that if there’s no soup or sandwich items in the house.

3. Make a list of ingredients.

It sounds elementary, but if you want to have hot dogs on Wednesday, write down everything you need to have a hot dog meal. Buns, mustard, sauce, relish, chips on the side, raw veggies, etc.

4. Take inventory.

Open your refrigerator, freezer and pantry and cross any items off your list of ingredients that you have. Be sure to check for common ingredients like condiments, eggs, butter and milk.

Ask yourself, beyond meals, what do you need? Are you making lunches for the kids to send to school? Do you drink coffee every morning? Need to replenish a bowl of fruit for quick snacks? Is it your turn to bring in a passing dish for a potluck at work? Determine what you need and add this to your list. If you want to control your grocery spending, you really want to avoid extra trips to the store. For this same reason, you want to avoid making unrealistic declarations like, “No snacks this week!” Be realistic. If you almost always have a dish of ice cream on movie night, then buy the ice cream.

5. Go to store and buy items from your list. Avoid putting anything into your cart unless it has a purpose.

If you don’t have these basics down pat, you can’t lower your grocery spending over time, even with coupons. It’s impossible.

Meal Planning…

My favorite recipe site is www.allrecipes.com. I love the rating system so you can get an idea of what the recipe is like by reading the reviews. Also, there seems to be a lot of food company recipes on the site as well. I find results from Campbell’s, Kraft, magazines, and, professionals and everyday cooks.

Another great resource is http://www.supercook.com. You tell Supercook what you have, and it displays recipes for you to explore.

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Only good today!

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I work in the customer service industry and I ask  people for their email addresses on a regular basis. Many refuse to give them to me because they don’t want to be ‘spammed.’ (Oddly enough, in most positions I’ve held to ask this, I further ask for other sensitive information which people give without question… social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc.) Human behavior is strange!

I welcome spam! Well, legitimate spam, that is.

If I shop somewhere, I sign up for the newsletter, the email list, and I always check yes next to the box asking if it’s OK to be contacted with future information about sales, coupons, etc.

Just this week I received in my inbox a $4/20 coupon for Rite-Aid, a $15/$50 coupon for Fashion Bug, and announcement of new coupons for Healthy Choice, Glade, and Robitussin, just to name a few.

I’ve had one email address for over a decade and I use this for everything. I’m talking free samples, registering for websites for free catalogs, etc. This is a basic yahoo web-based freebie account and I might get 50 actual spam a day from it, which go directly to my spam box without me ever having to view them.

I get approximately 20 emails per day from places I’ve registered at. Rarely do I get a newsletter that doesn’t have some kind of discount or coupon associated with it. Thumbing through this mail really isn’t a huge waste of my time. It takes a few moments at best. The best part about yahoo mail is, if you don’t open email from someone consistently, eventually it automatically gets trashed for you.

If you are afraid to fill up your mailbox, or if getting spam is your biggest pet peeve, I advise you to open an email account just for ‘junk.’ You just never know when this may come in handy. Some stores are famous for sending out store coupons to email addresses and you won’t get them in the store. They may be $5/$25 purchase or better, which can be used to get some spectacular deals!

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The items we spend the most money on are necessity items.

Directly, you just spend more. If you need shampoo this week, you need it. You aren’t going to go all week without it to see if you can save $1 the next week on your favorite brand. This is just going to happen with certain things. There are thousands of items at the grocery store, it is inevitable that you’ll pay full price for something you need.

Indirectly, there’s that $26 trip to get milk. How many times have you purposely went into a certain grocery store because you remember the ad and that store had the cheapest milk in town that week, only to come home with a few bags of other things? It happens all the time. It’s so easy to impulse shop for something for dinner, or to pick up some snacks, or even grab a magazine at the checkout. Seriously, I am cheap and I know that the true cost of running out of toilet paper is $20.

I don’t pay full price for much of anything because I can afford to wait for a spectacular sale. I currently have no less than 12 bottles of body wash in my linen pantry. I won’t buy it at full price as there’s no need. I won’t even buy it on a sale price because there’s no need. Now, if it goes on sale and there’s a coupon, and I can pick it up for .75 or less per bottle? Now we’re talking. I may add 3-4 when I find it at that price and add them to the linen closet.

One mistake people tend to make when they have a lot of something is to feel the need to find a use for it. I think this is what happened to our family when I used to shop a lot at Sam’s Club. I found a great deal on bacon there. I calculated it out to be a 6 month supply with about a 30% savings. Nice, huh?

Pre-Sam’s Club case-o-bacon purchase, I made bacon once a week with a breakfast dinner. Post-Sam’s Club case-o-bacon purchase, we were spiraling toward coronaries; bacon atop our burgers, breakfast as a dinner meal, brunch on Sunday, real bacon bits on salad night, real bacon crumbles on our home made pizza, turkey club sandwiches, bacon because tomatoes were ripe. Yum!

Before I knew it, my 6 month supply of bacon was gone in 2 months. I realized no savings because I was out the money I spent, plus I had nothing left in the freezer and if I wanted it for meals, I’d have to buy it again. Not to mention that it would take months of eating oatmeal to lower our cholesterol.

I was like a kid with a Halloween bucket who’d happily eaten candy for days, joyfully, happily, reveling in my ultimate candy abundance who all of a sudden reaches in and finds the only things left are those 3 peanut butter kisses and a peppermint.

To realize savings, you must think of your stockpile as an investment. You must be moderate. And you must be practical.

I can use myself as an example today. This week, I am not going to the grocery store. I don’t have to. There is not one thing we need this week from the store. From toilet paper to pasta sauce, we have it. I can choose to go to pick up a few deals, and maybe I’ll do this. I don’t have to, however, and that is the ultimate convenience.

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I’ve struggled writing this entry for my website for some time. It’s very important to me that I explain the concept of stockpiling correctly because this is vital for longer-term savings. It’s important to me that I get it right, that I make it easy to understand. Also, I don’t know how others shop and I’m worried that everyone that will find their way to my site will already know how to stock up and that this will read like an article to tell the difference between a triangle and a circle.

Stockpiling is an easy enough concept for anyone who lives near a Meijer. For years, Meijer has run an excellent store brand sale that was super awesome. One could pick up boxes of mac and cheese 4/$1, canned veggies 4/$1, store brand pastas (spaghettio types) 4/$1, boxes of plain pasta 4/$1, etc., etc.

Wouldn’t it be great if the price was low every week? It can be!

As this sale would approach in the fall I would stretch what we bought at the last store brand sale to last because the prices were simply unbeatable. People at Meijer would have overflowing carts with cans and boxes and fill their pantries cheap. And the best part is, Meijer brand is excellent. There are a few places around town where I find the off brand, well, off.

The math is pretty simple. On average, you were saving 50% or better. If you only bought a single can of green beans for .25, you saved .25 or more that week. If you happen to use a can of green beans every week in a certain recipe for a meal your family loves, by buying several cases at 50% off or better, your savings multiply.

You use 1 can per week. 1 can x 52 weeks/year = 52 cans.

If you buy 52 cans through the year at regular price, (52 cans x .57 (regular price) = $29.64) you’ll spend $29.64.

If you buy 52 cans when they are 50% off or better, (52 cans x .25 = $13) you’ll spend $13 for the year’s worth of canned green beans.

It makes sense to stock up when you find the lowest price like this and enjoy that same savings each and every week. For the year, you’ll have saved $16.64.

$16.64 may not sound like much over the course of a year, but multiply that by the 2 cans of corn, the can of carrots, and the 3 cans of peas you put in your famous casserole dishes and now you’re talking ($16.64 x 6 different cans) $98.84 for the year.

Now, it’s starting to look like real money saved.

This is what stockpiling to save money is all about. We all do it to some extent. Some believe that the price of gas goes up on the weekends or on holidays, so they will faithfully fill up their tank on Tuesdays. Some see the price of gas look a little lower than it did last week, and so they’ll stop to top off the tank even though they don’t really need to yet.

The trick is to buy enough that you’ll make it to the next sale.

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