Do You Buy Food?

It doesn’t matter if you are single and living at home with your parents, or single out on your own, married with kids or without kids.  I can guarantee that 100% of you are going to eat food!  Even if you are not buying your own groceries now, there will come a time when you will be doing it.  It is a fact of life.  We must eat to live and since most of us don’t live on a farm and grow our own stuff, we will need to make a trip to the grocery store.

Right now, we are having some tough economic times swirling around us.  There may have been a time when we used to have some money leftover at the end of the month - now we have month leftover at the end of the money.  What can we do?  Well, the Bible says we are to be good stewards of what God has given us and to make wise decisions.  Let me show you one way to do that.

Each week we make decisions about what we are going to eat.  There are 3 kinds of shoppers.

 

·      The first type goes to the store and hope they see something that they want to buy to make for dinner or whatever.  They don’t have a list and buy whatever strikes their fancy at the time. 

·      Another type of shopper will plan ahead and pick a menu and then make a list of things they need at the grocery store and then go shopping.  They may see some sales and save a little money on their shopping trip. 

·      Or, we can do be like the 3^rd type.  Instead of planning our menu first, we look at the store sales flyers first.  All the stores have their sales flyers on line, so we don’t even have to buy a newspaper.  Check over the flyers and see what meat is on sale - what vegetables are on sale, etc.  Then, look over your coupons - wait, you guys do use coupons, right? When you don’t use coupons on products that you actually buy - you are throwing away money. Most grocery stores have digital coupons on their website – you don’t even have to cut them out! 

We now have our list of ingredients made out according to the sales flyer and we have matched up our coupons to get the best deal.  But is it the best deal? Some of you may think that I have come from another planet when I tell you about my price book.  Before I buy something that I think might be a good deal, I check my price book.  For instance - maybe I need butter: 

Example:  (these are not real prices, just an example) Publix has it on sale for $2.00 a lb. - is that a good deal?  When I check the price book, I see that Costco sells 4 pounds of butter for $5.99 which means that one pound costs $1.50.  The sale at Publix is not a good deal.  It would be better to buy the 4 lbs. at Costco for a savings of $2.01.  The “upfront” cost is greater than buying just one pound but we have stocked up on butter and we won’t need it for a while - which means we won’t have to buy it again at $2.00 or whatever the price may be.  It does cost money to have a Costco card and that’s a decision that needs to be thought about carefully.  (Note: the membership fee is $60/year which works out to $5 per month.  I save more than that with the lower prices which makes it a good deal for me.) 

Sales and coupons not worth it? Here’s an example of my food purchases for one month.  My groceries cost $511.65 but I only paid $346.13 for a savings of $165.52.  That is just one month.  We don’t just purchase exactly what we need each week - we take advantage of sales to store up supplies for later use. For example: Quaker Instant Oatmeal is 3.89 a box.  A couple of weeks ago, Publix had a sale of buy 1 get 1 free.  So, I got 2 boxes for 3.89 which means I paid 1.95 per box.  That is a good price.  But, I also had 1.00 coupons.  I was able to use 2 of those coupons - even though one box was going to be free, they still accept a manufacturers coupon for it.  So, instead of paying 3.89 for 2 boxes of oatmeal, I paid 1.89 total for both boxes  - which means the price per box was only .95 cents.  So, the average person might pay 3.89 for one box of oatmeal and I paid .95 cents because I am paying attention to sales and coupons.  I bought several boxes that day and now I have a nice supply that will last me for a good while.

Where do we get these coupons?  Some are in the Sunday newspaper.  But if you don’t get the newspaper, there are websites online where you can print out just the coupons that you will use.  And, the store’s websites have digital coupons – you create an “account” and choose the coupons you want.  When you check out, you give your info and the coupons come off your total.  It doesn’t get any easier than that.

Some things are cheaper at Publix with their BOGO sales.  Some things may be cheaper at Walmart (for items that are not on sale at Publix).  And some things are cheaper at Costco.  But you won’t know it unless you do your research.  Meal planning, checking sales flyers, coupons . . .it does take time and requires planning ahead, but there is a reward – saving money!