The grocery game

[MissCrabette]

I subscribed to the site when I lived on my own. It's pretty useful.

Really? $40 of groceries for under $2? Sounds a little too good. Is it actually that useful?

I was wondering if it was useful too -- is it stuff you will eat and end up using to prepare meals? Things you would usually buy?

yeah - I was intrigued as well. I decided against trying it b/c coupons & I usually end up spelling disaster. I buy stuff I wouldn't normally buy b/c I have the coupon, and either don't use it or end up spending more b/c I still want to buy the things I normally buy! I've kind of concluded that buying "store brand" (in my case, Target Market Pantry) is the compromise that works. It is significantly cheaper, and is as good as the brand name stuff that I might find a coupon on -- with a few exceptions. I don't know of anywhere around here that does double coupons ... that is when I might actually take the coupon plunge again.

That makes sense that it would need to be a way of life -- you would plan meals around what you got on the list.

I'm like Jenn, I just end up buying the things I want and then end up with more than I would get otherwise. I need to get back in the habit of planning a week of meals at a time.

That is such a great idea, Tara. To devote a day to that planning. I have so many scraps of paper and loose ends I'm trying to keep up with. I've been meaning to post a thread about "what do you do to organize/what is your schedule" that we could all share. Maybe that is on a scrap of paper somewhere?

I hope your planning day for July works out.

[Vanquisher]

I plan 6 nights of dinners every week. It saves us a lot of money to do it this way because I don't end up buying a lot of extra stuff we don't need. I don't plan what day to do each thing, just that these are the six meals. It works out well because usually there is overlap of ingredients, and my list ends up being suprisingly small. It takes a lot of the worry out of dinnertime. I have easy meals planned and ones that take more time so that if I am feeling very tired on a particular day, I can do one of the easy meals. Sometimes the six days lasts more than a week because I buy a few "filler" meals (frozen pizzas, sandwiches, frozen burritos) for lunches and dinners (especially on call nights), and I sometimes have leftovers. We eat out about twice a month.

[Sheherezade]

Sounds like me, Heidi. I have one of those scraps of paper with the weeks meals posted on the fridge. Usually, I've scribbled it down in the grocery store these days. My problem now is that baseball, softball and the pool have conflicted with dinnertime too often. My meals end up getting scrapped for cereal or pasta for the kids at 5:00 before the game.

I'm trying out the cook for a month plan now. I'm thinking it would be great to have 15 meals or so in the freezer. I wonder if the grocery game could help with that? I have some websites for the cook for the month stuff that have lots of recipes. If only they also had a recipe generator based on the ingredients you have on hand.....

It is funny how you finally have the energy and time to save money when your husband is OUT of training.

[MissCrabette]

The Grocery Game works best for planned purchases. They mention that products go on sale every x number of weeks and that's when you should buy using a coupon, thus doubling the savings. If you need something right away, you pay for convenience. So it doesn't work so well if for example you run out of milk. The thing I like best about the system is that there really isn't much clipping involved. In their weekly lists, they tell you exactly where to find the coupon so all you have to do when you get the circulars is to save them.