The Grocery Game: I'm playing and I'm LOVING it!

Let me tell you about "The Grocery Game"...I heard about it on one of those morning shows...Good Morning America or Today or whatever. Anyway, this woman was talking about using coupons and following sales trends and saving loads and loads of money. I thought "Oh yea, right. I've seen the coupons in the Sunday paper and most of them are for stuff I don't even buy." I envisioned my family eating Spam and Kraft Mac and Cheese 5 nights a week and Hamburger Helper the other two nights. Anywho, for some reason I thought I'd give it a go. I was spending at least $250 a week on groceries every week for a family of five and had almost resigned myself to the fact that food costs a lot of money, so why bother trying to save.
I logged onto the website the lady talked about on the show, http://www.thegrocerygame.com/ and registered. It cost me $1 for a one-month trial. What the heck...I can afford a dollar. So I signed up. Once you sign in and enter your zip code, the sales from your local grocery store are organized for you in one place and matched up with coupons from the Sunday paper insert, your grocery stores coupons and a few other easy to find sources. You click on the items you want and you can print out a grocery list based on the sale items you want to purchase. Easy peasy.

I've always made a menu and grocery list. I even use the sales flyer to plan my meals based on which meats are on sale. But this system organized things even further. Here's my menu plan/grocery template. I use it to plan out my week's meals and groceries.

The first week I saved about $17 using coupons. I still spent a little over $200 but I could see how you could increase your savings as you begin to collect coupons and only use them when the item is also on sale. The next week I saved $18 and spent just about $200. The third week I was up to a $20 savings and my bill dropped below $200 for the first time since having a family! I'm on my sixth week now and I'm proud to say that today I saved $29 from coupons and my total bill was $160. See for yourself (no you don't need bifocals, the image is a little fuzzy)

Total Cost: 160.04

MFG Coupons: 21.95

Store Coupons: 6.95



Woo Hoo!!!!!!
So I bet you're wondering what I actually got for a measly $160! Lots of fruits and veggies- red apples, green apples, a mango, avocadoes, spinach, celery, mushrooms, carrots, red potatoes, and red peppers. A few boxes of the kids favorite cereals; which I spent no more than $1.50 on per box. Meats, TWO pork tenderloin filets (buy one get one free plus had a $1.00 off coupon), 4 packages of center cut, boneless pork chops, some deli meat, and a pack of chicken (I didn't need to buy the ground beef I planned to use for my Friday spaghetti and meatball dinner as I had stockpiled ground beef last week when it was on sale!). A variety of snack foods like Smartfood popcorn, Snyders pretzels to name a couple...And lots, lots more. I do like to feed my family healthy and I've not had to compromise that goal one bit!
I know why she calls it "The Grocery Game". I can't wait until Sunday to do my grocery shopping. It's a game to see how much I can save! Give it a try and let me know how you do!