Sunday, November 4, 2007

Shopping Sales the Easy Way

I'm not much into coupons, but I do watch the sales. Right now, with prices rising faster than a kite on a windy day, shopping the sales is the smartest way we can buy food.

If you can get the wheel turning right, you never have to pay full price for most of your food. Even if you don't have much to spare, you can still stock up a little every time (even $5 worth will help) there's a good sale, and you'll have the product next time you need it - at sale price. If you do this constantly, you'll soon have a pantry full of products bought on sale and you can "pantry shop" (choose what's in your pantry rather than what's in the store) before going to buy groceries. That cuts way down on what you need to buy.

Shopping the sales sounds like a complicated job, but it's really not. Most newspapers run grocery store ads midweek, so that's a start. Not every store puts in their ads, though, and not everyone subscribes to a newspaper. Cheaper and easier: Find the sales online. Most grocery stores have weekly sales listed for your area. You still have to go and hunt down each store, but it's cheaper than a newspaper subscription and you don't have to wade through paper ads scattered all over the table.

Even better than spending a lot of time going to individual sites and looking up the ads, there's a place where you can find them all at one time, faster and easier, with a couple of clicks.

MyGroceryDeals.com really does deliver the sales ads. They've recently had a site facelift, so if you've been there before but had trouble with navigation, you'll love it now. It's all out and upfront so you can see where you want to go and get there right away.

They've added nutrition information and (what can be really helpful!) allergy popups that tell you when you're choosing food that contains whatever allergen you've put in your profile. Super neat.

And, no, I don't get paid to say this; I think the site fills a need we all have: getting the best deal for the best price for the least effort. Can't beat that.

8 comments:

  1. Thanks for the tip - I didn't even know this existed! This will definitely save me some time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're welcome! I know it sure saves me time.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love to just go in and by the sales items and leave. It makes the store manager angry!

    (trashtotreasures.blogspot.com)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I suppose it could make the store manager angry, but if they don't want you to shop the sales, they shouldn't have sales... oh, but then they couldn't attract enough shoppers to impulse buy strategically placed products... quandary for them, huh? :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I was just thinking of a way to know what was on sale each week without having to go through all the ads. I will definitely check this site out. Thanks for the tip. I was also considering go to my nearby store site and signing up to have the sale ads e-mailed to me weekly (I know some do this, not I am not sure if all do).

    ReplyDelete
  6. You're welcome, Linday. I've had ads emailed to me in the past and, while it did help, it's not nearly as convenient (for me, anyway) as it is to use this and have them all in one place. You can make a list right there and print it out or have it emailed to you.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yep I stock my freezer on sales! I have started online shopping since gas is so high here 3.18 today ouch!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Simple Living, is the cost of shipping less than gas? That's one downside to shopping online, but it may be cheaper right now.

    ReplyDelete