How to Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half in Hawai’i (Step Three)

Finally, I’m rolling out step three.  Its fairly simple.  Once you buy products only on sale and combine the sale price with a coupon, make sure you buy as many as possible so that you never pay full price for the item again.  For instance, this week Kraft Bagelfuls are on sale at Foodland 2/$4.00.  I had 10 coupons for $1/1 box.  So my rock bottom price for a box of four Bagelfuls is $1.00 plus tax.  Approx. .25 per serving.  My kids love these things for a quick breakfast on school mornings so its worth it for me to stock up.

Step 3:

BUY ENOUGH PRODUCT TO LAST YOU UNTIL THE NEXT SALE.

Steps #1 & 2 can only offer occasional success at lowering your grocery bill. Step #3 (commonly known as stockpiling) is powerful. Following step #3 means you never have to pay full price for an item again.

One coupon expert estimates that sales cycles are 12 weeks long—sometimes longer and sometimes shorter. What this means is that it is likely that a product will go on sale once every 12 weeks. It makes sense to buy enough of the product while it’s on sale to last you until the next sale so that you are always paying the lowest price (hopefully combined with a coupon) for it.

Your stockpiling is only limited by the space you have. It would make sense that you only buy two roasts at the sale price when you only have room for two in your freezer. (You may want to think about buying an extra freezer to stockpile meat and frozen veggies in.) Non-perishable items should be easier to store—you can do that on the tops of shelves and cabinets, under beds, in your storage shed, etc.

You can keep your pantry and freezer stockpiles organized by posting the items purchased with the dates listed so that you can keep track of purchases and everything can be used up in a timely manner.  As you build your stockpile, you can plan meal menus around the items you have on hand.  This saves us a lot of $$.

Just a Hawai’i note about stockpiling: bugs often make their way into packaged products here.  While I’ve never seen bugs in stockpiled cake mixes, I have seen them in packaged prepared foods such as Rice-a-roni and pasta mixes.  As a result, I no longer buy these items although if I did I would only stockpile a few at a time to prevent waste.

In my last post about how to cut your grocery bill in half, I’ll discuss following the steps on a tight (recessionista) budget as well as offer some tips on judicious use of coupons.

Dear Longs

Dear Longs,

I’m breaking up with you. I found a new drugstore and his name is Walgreens. He gives me what I need and sometimes what I want.

Longs is a cultural institution in Hawai’i. Lee Cataluna wrote a great play and then short story collection called Folks You Meet at Longs. The book highlights the local people who meet & talk story at Longs. But Longs, while a Hawai’i institution, has never offered loss leader deals like Walgreens does. For years, Longs has had a captive clientele as the only pharmacy chain in the islands. As such, it never had to price their stock competitively. So it did what many retail chains here in Hawai’i do (yeah, K-mart, I’m talkin’ to you)–they withheld many of the perks offered to Longs shoppers on the U.S. continent. Hawai’i residents are, in effect, punished for living in the islands. Okay, maybe that is harsh. I understand that we have to pay the shipping/airfare for nearly every nonconsumable sold in stores but, Longs, please understand that I have to make the numbers in my budget work every month and its getting harder and harder to do that. Even when Longs was recently bought out by CVS, one of the biggest pharmacy chains in the U.S., no change in prices, discount/rebate programs. Nothing.

On the other hand, new chains coming into the islands are offering mainland prices on many products. Like my new boyfriend, Walgreens. And I’m sure I’m going to fall in love with Target once I get inside one here on Oahu. Perhaps Wags understands that once I’m in their store to pick up the Kleenex on sale, I’ll get some other things and drop off my prescription as well. So that’s why I’m leaving you, Longs. Walgreens treats me with the respect I crave as a consumer and I can afford to shop there as well.

Arby’s and the Jonas Brothers

Man, am I tired. Mardi Gras really was quite a fat Tuesday. Twelve-year-old daughter and I had several errands in town. In between them, we went from place to place, collecting free food today. Started at Burger King and got a free 2-pack of BK Burger Shots when I purchased a Value Meal (Jr Whopper, mahalo!). Next I hopped off at Quizno’s to get the free small sub. I asked them to cut the roast beef and cheddar sub in half so DD and I could share it. Finally, we hit the Jack-in-the-Box drive-in for our two free tacos. All in all, a more than adequate dinner. Thanks for the freebies, BK, Quiznos and Jack!

More free food–when you buy a regular drink at Arby’s, you can get a free sandwich with this coupon.

From Daddyodeals, a free Jonas Bros download is available here. I’m still deciding about whether or not to tell my 12 yr old about it . . . here is a Kraft UPC # to use to get it: 21000 02373

More Chocolate, I Mean Antioxidants

i just now found my card reader and downloaded pics from two deals i did last week. yes, virginia, there are bargains to be had in hawai’i. we just have to look high and low and work harder to find them. lucky thing i like research.

photogenic DD#2 offered to display our goodies. she is showing off the 14 bags of fun-size treats we’re saving for halloween. foodland has a member’s card ongoing discount. when you spend $200 there, they give you a maika’i certificate. you can use your certificates to get 5% off of your grocery bill or save them up for when they have promotions on items. we like to save them for the free haagen daaz promotion and/or another good one that comes along. it just so happened that i had seven certificates when they made the bags of candy october’s maika’i promotion. fourteen FREE bags of candy. YESSS! on halloween our neighborhood gets crazy busy with trick or treaters. hopefully 14 bags will have us covered that night. i let the kids open one bag of M&Ms and then made DH hide the rest until the 31st so that no chocolate emergencies will make us, i mean me, raid the stash.

my second deal (which dd#2 also graciously agreed to model) is also antioxidant-related. safeway had a deal, buy 2 hershey’s bars and get 2 free. i combined that with a hershey’s coupon, buy 1 hershey’s chocolate bar, get 1 hershey’s special free. twenty nearly free chocolate bars! i say nearly because the face value of the coupon was .79 and the actual price of the hershey’s bar was 1.19. that worked out to about .20 per bar. still a steal for here. i’ve been rationing them out to the kids and being a little more generous with the grown-ups in the house. ok, i mean me. they’re almost gone now but make no mistake: i have more of these coupons to use . . .

Today’s Deal (it wasn’t free, but . . . )

today i received 30 coupons for .30 off of one powerade. this wonderful trader also threw one coupon for “buy 10 powerades, get 5 free”. my closest store is having a special on powerade. they’re $1 each and when you buy 10 you get a 24 pack of 1/2 liter dasani water for free. so i went there today, bought 15 powerade with my .30 off coupons and the B10G5F coupon and stacked the water on top of that for $7. excellent deal for these parts. what slowed me down was the bottle fees and taxes which added another $5 onto the total.

right now the powerade is lined up along the wall across from the pantry. they look like colorful little sidewalk lanterns. dh has already put the water in with our emergency storage stash. when you live on an island, you learn to keep bottled water, batteries and bags of rice on hand just in case of natural disaster or shipping strike.