The Grocery Game, Take One

A couple of friends recently introduced me to The Grocery Game. It's an easy way to combine store sales and coupons (clipped, downloaded and "non-clip" coupons) in order to save the maximum amount of money. I've clipped coupons in the past but honestly it got overwhelming when time was running short so I abandoned it for a long time.

I finally realized that I was tired of paying full retail prices for my groceries and other everyday necessities. I haven't worked since last December and with 3 kids now and only one of us working outside the home, I need to find ways to save money any way I can.

I joined last week and spent a couple of days clipping coupons and figuring out how the whole thing works. A lady named Teri put the whole thing together. And she just wrote a great book about The Grocery Game. - it retails for $12.99 but I found it on Amazon.com this morning for only $2.98! Wahoo!!! It does a great job of explaining the whole process for how to get groceries and other items for a significant discount. I can't wait for it to arrive.

Anyway...I shopped two different stores with my game list. I selected Kroger, and although there weren't many items on my list this week due to the holiday weekend, I saved $19.63 and spent $23.92. It was easy to do! Then we went to the other store, which I won't mention by name, because the experience wasn't nearly as good. They had some of the deals, but they were already out of a lot of the items and the store wouldn't substitute similar things. The employees were also not very helpful when I had questions, the store was incredibly busy, Luke was crying some of the time, and basically I decided not to go back to that store - I think I'm going to stick to Kroger. By the time we left the 2nd store, I just wanted to go home and suck my thumb! By the way, I don't recommend doing this little activity with your three-year-old who needs a nap. BAD decision. I'm going by myself next time.

At the second store, I spent $112.31 and saved $31.15. I would have saved more except they were out of some of the items I needed. So, my total savings for today were just under $51.00. Not too shabby for my first attempt! My goal is to save enough money each month that it pays for Leah's school tuition...a goal that should be easily attainable.

Try it for yourself - it's amazing! It only costs $10 every 8 weeks - $1.25 per week. And the first 4 weeks is free to try so you don't have to worry about paying for something you if you don't like it.