Grocery Store Ads

I have to admit that I'm not 100% sure how I want to go about posting grocery store deals. So, what I'm thinking about doing right now is referring to one of my favorite websites, Pinching Your Pennies. This is an AWESOME site that lists grocery store deals by state. If you click on the top bar that says Screaming Deals By State it allows you to choose your state. From there, most states have a wide network of people who pair up the grocery ads with any available coupons. This site also has a Coupon list so that if you are looking for something in particular you can scroll the list of current coupons in alphabetical order by brand name. (This list is limited to Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada, Utah, and Virginia. If your state is not included in this, let me know and I will direct you to another resource). Keep in mind that the coupons are manually entered so they may not appear the same day the coupon comes out in the paper. I find this site very helpful as it is people who are actually in your area posting about the deals they are finding.

One of the tricks to maximizing your savings with coupons is to *obviously* match up a coupon with a sale. Going back to when I first started looking at coupons I looked at that $.35 coupon and thought sarcastically "Whoopee! I get $.35 off an item that is $2.49! It's cheaper to just by the store brand." Now I look at that $.35 coupon and think "Okay, when that item goes on sale for $1 and my coupon doubles to $.35 I can get it for $.30! Or even better, maybe it will go on sale when the store is tripling and quadrupling coupons! Then I would get it FREE!"

First thing to do is find out which stores in your area double coupons. This is something that is done automatically at the register on a daily basis. At least in Arizona, coupons are doubled/tripled/quadrupled up to $1. That means that a coupon worth $.25 will double to $.50, $.40 to $.80, $.50 to $1, $.60 to $1, etc. The stores that will ALWAYS double your coupon are: Fry's, Safeway, and Basha's. Albertson's does run specials when they double/triple so be on the look out for that.

When you see a coupon listed as a match for the item on sale, it will look like this:
Land O Frost Premium One Pound Lunchmeat, any variety .55/1 (8-31-09) RP-5/31
First it tells you what the coupon is for: Land O Frost Premium One Pound Lunchmeat, any variety
Next it tells you the value of the coupon: $.55 off one package
Next it gives the expiration date: 8/31/09
Finally it tells you the insert it was found in: Red Plum (RP) insert in the 5/31 paper.

So to match up this coupon with the sale, you will go to your RP insert from the 5/31 paper and cut it out. Now you're ready to take it to the store!

One thing that I will be doing that I personally have found very helpful is to post pictures of the things I have bought at the grocery store. I'm a visual learner so this helps me to see the sales and perhaps pick up on something that I didn't notice was in the ad.

Let me know if this helps those of you who are just starting out and if you have any questions! :)