Flowers and Savings!

I have a couple of fun updates. First of all I want to share that my loving husband surprised me with flowers tonight and it was such a treat! He picked pink which is my favorite color and bought them to show his love. What a lucky girl I am! :-)

And second, I wanted to share my latest grocery game news.  I know I have been talking a lot about it lately, but it's so great,  it's hard not to talk about it.  :-) I wanted to show a photo of the items I got with my coupons tonight, so you can see that it is brand name items that I am getting for the great prices.  I saved 106 dollars off of a bill that would have been 216! I got a lot of toiletry items which are on sale now so we are now fully stocked on soap, shampoo, body wash, toothpaste, mouthwash, etc. We are set for months! How fun is that! :-)

Grocery Game Update

After a few weeks of using "The Grocery Game" I wanted to provide a little update on the progress. I am still extremely happy with it and here are some quick facts and things I have learned so far.

• In the last three weeks we have saved more than enough money to pay for a pantry to keep our stock pile in.
• Out of 340 dollars in groceries, I have paid 155 dollars!
• A vast majority of the products I have purchased are name brand items.
• The 4 week trial period only costs a dollar, and after that it's 10 dollars every 8 weeks.
• There are many sales on the list that aren't advertised.
• Home Depot is a great place to get an affordable stand alone pantry. I think if/ when we get a house with a garage, we will get a couple more and line them up in the garage.
• For Ralphs, it's important to shop on Sundays because some of the sale items are gone by Monday evening. The sale period may differ for each store but for Ralphs it's Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.
• The Grocery Game has changed the way I shop for food and it's given us the gift of extra cash in our bank account.

My first try at "The Grocery Game"

Tonight was my first try at "The Grocery Game" and I'm thrilled with the results! (and so is my wallet)  For those of you who haven't heard of it, "The Grocery Game" is a website that a woman created to help other people save money on groceries.  She created this huge database that keeps track of all the coupons and sales the happen at the major grocery stores.  Each week all you have to do is clip the coupons out of the L.A. Times or other major paper, and hold on to your coupon mailings.  On the weekends, "the list" is published which tells you what is on sale for that week. At Ralphs where I shop, the sales happen on Sunday,  Monday and Tuesday.  The list is color coded. Blue means it's time to stock up on an item because it's at the lowest price. Green means that you can get the item for free. And Black means that the item is on sale, but you should only buy it if you need it or want a treat.  That information, combined with the coupons that she tells you to use, add up to huge savings. And the philosophy is that you would only buy items when they are on sale, stock pile those items, and then go to your own pantry to go shopping once you need the item.  Tonight was my first time trying out this system and I was so happy to see how much I saved!  The bill would have been 106 dollars, and I paid 53!!!!!!  I'm a grocery game convert now and will definitely be using it to save money from now on. :-)