Stretching dollars at the grocery store on household supplies, food

[Kaleva]

13. I know from experience that shopping isn't easy.

I sort of took over the job after my then wife was sick for long periods of time.

After awhile, we did end up with a rather good system of looking at the store flyers to see what was on sale, find coupons for such and make out a shopping list. We got to know which items went on sale often, which ones rarely did and which never did. For items that never went on sale, we switched to cheaper store brands or went without.

It took both of us to plan the shopping trips and buy only what was on sale and had coupons for which further reduced cost. Since the flyer didn't list everything that was on sale in the store, I tried to stop by there a few days before shopping, walk up and down the aisles and write down on a notepad the items on sale that we would need or were running low on.

The wife, meanwhile, would keep a binder of coupons she bought off of E-Bay, had printed out, or gotten out of magazines and newspapers. Then, with the info I had in my notes and the coupons she had, we'd make up a shopping list.

For a family of three, two dogs and a cat, we managed to reduce our shopping budget by about 40% but it took alot of work and planning to do this.