For those of you with a Bloom grocery store in your area, I have some good news.  Wednesday through Tuesday, March 25-31, Bloom will be tripling coupons up to $.99.  Limit 20 coupons per visit, per day. 

Bloom also has some great buy 1 get 1 free specials this week.

• Perdue Perfect Portions chicken breast
• Olivia’s organic salad
• Eddy’s ice cream
• Weight Watchers and Smart Ones dinners
• Progresso soups
• Orville Redenbacher popcorn
• Scott paper towels
• Thomas English muffins
• Hormel chili master
• and much, much more!

There are many items that you could get for free with a coupon.  As always, you should check your local store for current sales.  Happy saving!

image from bloom

I walked into the grocery store yesterday and a man from the newspaper had his little booth set up to give out Sunday papers and to promote the subscription.  For 13 weeks, the price was about $32, but for signing up he gave me a $10 gift card to the grocery store. 

Now, I can start back up with The Grocery Game.

Some of you already know this, but last year my husband and I worked and lived at a ministry for a while.  Before moving there, we lived off our stockpile of groceries.  There was no sense in buying more groceries, when I had a pantry full of things I got at awesome deals.

Now that we’ve moved away from the ministry, it has been difficult to start over again.  I am not the kind of person that walks into the grocery store and only buys what I need for that week’s meals.  I was not raised that way and it’s simply not thrifty!  After all, why would I want to pay $4.99 for meat this week when I could have bought it last week for $1.99?

Shopping the sales with coupons is the best way to stockpile and to avoid paying full price for groceries.  When using The Grocery Game (TGG), I can easily save 50% or more on my grocery bill each week and have a pantry full of items.

So, here I am . . . All ready to start looking at TGG list each week and clipping coupons.  I’m ready to start saving again.

In case you’re wondering what the big deal is or how you can save 50% or more on your grocery bill, please check out these links:

How to Play The Grocery Game
10 Tips for Using Coupons
An Interview with Teri Gault, Founder of The Grocery Game
Time is Money and Money is Time

If you do decide to play The Grocery Game, please use me as your referral. knowhimwell at hotmail dot com. The introductory membership is $1 for the first month.

image: mine

I had a problem. When I went to the grocery store I had to take my 2-year-old with me. My little boy is normally very well behaved but for some reason, whenever we walk into a grocery store he starts acting as though he’s never been in public before.

As you can imagine, grocery store visits were taking a lot of time. I had my grocery list from the grocery game and my coupons, and I was trying to find the best deals while dealing with a 2-year-old. I decided I’d better find a quicker way to get out of the store.

Here’s what I did to save time:

First, I looked over The Grocery Game list for the week. I printed off only the items that I was interested in purchasing.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again . . . I hate those little plastic grocery bags.  I can’t stand how they accumulate in my house.  It drives me nuts that I put them in my van so that I’ll take them to the store to recycle, but forget to take them inside and then they stay in my van for a few more weeks.

Recently, I wrote about how Lowe’s Foods is allowing their customers to purchase reusable grocery bags with their green points.  And not only that, they’re giving 50 green points for each reusable bag you bring back in to use. 

Two weeks ago, I purchased one more reusable bag for 1000 green points.  I also received 250 green points because I brought in 5 bags.  Now I have 6 bags of my own!  I’m so excited!!!  I have enough bags now that I haven’t had to get any plastic!  Hooray!  Don’t worry, I still have a large enough stash of the plastic ones at the house in case I need them.

All this talk of reusable bags has been a great conversation piece at Thrifty Mommy.  We had a poll to see who was using the bags, who wanted more bags, and who wasn’t giving up their plastic bag ways.  Here are the results.

Do you have reusable bags that you take to the grocery store?

36% - Yes, I have a lot of them and they are awesome!

28% - Yes, but I’d like a few more.

26% - No, but I’d really like to try them.

10% - No way, I’m sticking with plastic.

According to the results, most of you have reusable bags or would like to use them.  Thanks for working to keep those crazy little bags out of the landfills.

What do you think of the results?

Today we had to take the kitty to get her stitches out and on the way home we spotted a new scratch and dent grocery store.  I told hubby that we didn’t need to go in because we did not have anymore room in our cabinets.  lol  I told him I was holding out for triple coupon day.  I’m glad we went inside though.  Here are a few of the bargains we found: 

• Betty Crocker Warm Delights  @ .25 - had just gone out of date
• 39 oz canister of Swiss Miss hot chocolate @ 1.25 - the can was dented.  This will be perfect for church, since some people prefer hot chocolate instead of coffee.
• Honey Maid graham crackers @ .50 - I got these for the children’s class at church.
• 24 oz bottle of Honey @ 1.10.  Yay, I’ve been going through a lot of honey lately with my hot tea.
• 6 pk of triple blade razors @ 1.25.  What a deal!
• Boudreaux’s Butt Paste @ .75.  Yes, it is still in date.  The box was slightly dented on the corner.  BTW, this is good stuff.  Oprah even recommends it.
• Oral B CrossAction power toothbrush @ 1.25.  I’m sure that this toothbrush normally costs at least $6-7.
• 250 ibuprofen @ 1.00
• Nyquil @ 1.00
• Tidy Cat cat litter @ 2.50 - This beats paying $4.00 anyday.

These are just a few of the deals we got.  We had a very nice experience at this store. 

I encourage you to ask around and see if there are discount grocery stores in your area.  Yes, there are some bad ones out there, but finding a good one is worth the effort.

Do you shop at discount grocery stores?  What kind of experiences have you had?

I haven’t used The Grocery Game in about a month.  In December, there were a few sad weeks where there were no coupons in the paper.  It was ok though, because I was busy with preparing and shopping for Christmas.

Last week I spent a few hours going through all of my coupons.  They needed some weeding out and organizing.  I clipped all the coupons that the list recommended I use.  Then I also included some coupons I had that would be expiring soon.  I wanted to see if any of them would be worth the buy.

I headed out to Lowe’s Foods (with a 2-year-old).  We shopped around the store and first I bought things that we absolutely needed and things that were on my list as the best bargains.  At Lowe’s Foods you can get 20 coupons doubled per day, so long as the coupon is 99 cents or less.  After using my grocery game list I still had some room left to use other coupons.  I used whatever I could to equal my 20, plus I had some other coupons for $1.00 or more that would not get doubled.

I ended up spending about $75, but I saved $90!  Read more

 
When I was a married college student I was a dedicated coupon shopper.  I had my coupons organized in my little coupon pouch.  I would shop mainly with my coupons at Ingles grocery store because they doubled coupons and I also shopped the sales.  With my technique I rarely paid full price for anything. 

I’ve decided that I need to get serious once again.  No more tossing coupons into an envelope or my wallet or losing them in a mess of clutter on the kitchen counter.  I got out my coupon pouch this month and began organizing my coupons.  Today I got a mailing of coupons from my mom and immediately filed each coupon and finished labeling my categories.  I’m so pleased! 

I have found that there is a store relatively close by that doubles coupons up to 99 cents!  This week I had a 55 cent coupon for pickles and I was able to save $1.10 on a jar of dill cubes that cost about $1.89.  I also saved 80 cents on the $1.50 crescent rolls I needed.  That made my cost 79 cents for the pickles and 70 cents for the crescent rolls.

On the way out of the store, the guy from the newspaper was selling subscriptions.  My lucky day.  I am now subscribed to the Sunday paper.  I am going to be the coupon queen once again.  I’m back to claim my crown.  lol  I may even become a member of The Grocery Game.

Here are a few tips:

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