great deals

I went grocery shopping today. A major shopping trip. And I saved a lot of money. Take a look at these photos. I bought 4 cases (24 cans) of canned fruits and beans. I bought steak, chicken, ground beef, lots of fresh fruits and veggies, yogurt, cheese, eggs, cereal, lots of pasta, rice, toilet paper, laundry detergent, and a number of other items. What do you think this cost me?





I asked Alfredo and he is absolutely no fun. He guessed a hundred bucks. This from the guy that can spend $70 on a couple bags of food. His second guess was closer. My combined total at 2 stores was $250. This was a lot of food. But I saved a lot of money. I think Smith's is overpriced, so I don't really buy into their "you saved" amounts, because I would usually shop at Walmart, but according to Smith's I saved $29 on food I paid $50 for. The rest was from Macey's from their case lot sale. And I probably would have saved a little bit more (not much) if I'd brought coupons, but I forgot them today.

I saved this money thanks to a great website called Deals to Meals (formerly myfoodstoragedeals.com). It is awesome. Carin and Aly have also posted previously about this great website. For $4.95 a month,they compare all the ads and tell you what the best deals are. Then they give you recipes that use primarily items that are on sale. They tell you where to shop and stock up. They tell you it can save you hundreds each month.

Now, I have been a member for almost 2 months, and it is great. I have been price matching at Wal-mart for years. And so it isn't saving me hundreds, but it is probably saving me $75-$100 per month, and may save me even more in the long run. But even better is that it is saving me so much time. In the past, I would search all the ads, see what was on sale, make my list with each price written down, then look at recipes, add to my list, go to Walmart, check the advertised prices against their normal prices and then separate my groceries into things being price matched and things that aren't. It usually took me an hour or more to prepare to go shopping and then an hour to an hour and a half to shop. And I found that most canned goods were usually cheaper at Walmart than even the advertised prices (although not always) so to save time, I got to the point that I would just check prices on produce and meat. This website takes almost all the prep time away from me. I love it! I've really beefed up my food storage by only increasing my grocery bill about $50 in two months. And pretty soon, I will already have most things on hand and won't need to do as much shopping...except for perishables. Their philosophy is that you should never buy things full price. Pretty cool.

So I know that this all sounded like a sales pitch, and I didn't mean it to. Michelle had a couple of friends over when I got home and they seemed to think I was crazy for taking pictures of my groceries, but I got so many good deals. I got enough steaks to provide dinner for us (and lunch the next day for Alfredo and I) three times. Enough chicken for 3-4 meals. Enough ground beef for about 5-7 meals...depending on what I make with it. And a year's supply of several fruits and beans (kidney, black, garbanzo...). Hooray!