I shared my top five ways to cut your grocery budget with you a couple of weeks back.  You can still read that post “Frugal Grocery Shopping”.

On this weeks edition of Saving Dollars and Sense I want to explore the first step a little closer.

Step #1 – Stock up when something is on sale.

There are certain items that every family uses on a regular basis.  These would be your staples, such as grains, sugar, flours, baking powder, corn starch, spices, condiments, canned veggies, ect.  The list could go on and on, but it is unique to each family.

It is important for us to know what our staples are.  This way when something is on sale you know that something that you family is going to use and won’t sit on your shelves for very long.  For us, things like ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce, rice, corn starch, salad dressings, tea, kool aid, canned veggies, are all things I know that we use regularly in our meals.

Since I am going to purchase these items anyways, I wait until a sale comes along.  Paying attention to the sales is helpful because certain items go on sale every few weeks like clockwork.

For example I know that during the Thanksgiving & Christmas seasons, baking products are no doubt going to be on sale.  Also, the newspaper inserts are going to be full of coupons for extracts, yeast, corn starch, baking chips, brown sugar, ect.  Therefore, I will stock up on these products for the rest of the year.

Most of the time if I have coupons in hand I can get these items for a few cents or free.

Example:
Last year yeast was on sale for $1.00 a packet.  I had several coupons for $1.00 off yeast.  This gave me about 15 packets of yeast to use over the next several months free.

I don’t shop only for today, I am always planning for the future.