My Wife the Money-Saving Machine

A couple weeks ago my wife and I went food shopping while the kids were over at a friend's house playing (I know, we lead an exciting life.) As I've said before, my wife really knows how to save money, and grocery shopping is her specialty. She went armed with coupons, a rain-check (from a previous sale) and a store flyer. When we were done, I was amazed at the amount of savings she realized off the retail price. Here was the tally:

• Total cost of groceries before discount: $67
• Amount of savings/discounts: $17
• Net cost: $50

In other words, she saved 25% off the regular retail prices. As I was thinking about this experience, I had the following thoughts:

• We spend about $400 per month on food. If the purchase above was indicative of what my wife saves, this nets out to $100 per month she saves us or $1,200 per year. Not bad at all!

• How many people don't take the time and effort to save money on food purchases and simply buy what they want at full price? Those that do are paying a TON more than they need to be for food, I can tell you that for sure!

Comments

[Kevin]

This is one area I wish we were more organized. We do make a list of meals we'll have the upcoming week, but we end up buying some stuff not on the list. We do buy quite a bit of fresh fruit, but I think we pay too much for it sometimes.

[justin]

I often wonder if it would be more cost effective to use weekly sales and coupons together at a traditional grocery store or just go to Walmart? Walmart seems to be generally a few cents cheaper, but the grocery store has a better selection of produce and is a much cleaner and more organized shopping experience. Plus, I don't like to buy any meat a Walmart. I've had some bad experiences with Walmart meat, especially their beef selection. But doggone it, it is just hard to beat Walmart on the staples and essentials...

[Mark]

This is an easy one. When I shop at Food Lion, I only buy those items that are VIP discounted, or "Buy 1 Get 1 Free". I do this once a week to get all the types of food, since the specials are different every week (obviously). If I tally $75, I usually end up paying around $45-50, with NO coupons. Coupons usually are for expensive name-brand item, and I've found the store brands to be as good or better anyway. If I'm strict about the loyalty discounts, and learn to live without items until they go on sale (which is almost always once every 4-5 weeks) you can't beat supermarket prices. Rainchecks are great also, but if something's sold out, I can usually find a similar item on loyalty discount at some other supermarket that week.

I agree that Walmart/Sam's Club meats are sometimes a good deal in bulk, but for some reason the steaks have no flavor at all. I make a lot of cocktails, so buying lemons and limes in bulk turns out to be my biggest cost savings/unit of any item I buy regularly.
I no longer have a Sam's Club membership because I wasn't saving any money and as a single guy, I usually threw out too much food that expired.

[Alex Ross]

While I applaud the efforts of your wife I must also caution that saving on purchases and in turn not putting the saved money aside into a savings or investment account really amounts to a whole lot of nothing in long run. My wife buys everything on sale everything but she is just a broke at the end of the month as she continues to purchase things until the balance is 0.

The game I play every month:(We keep separate accounts)

There are only 5 things you can do with Money:

Earn It,
Gift it,
save(Near Term horizon),Invest It(longterm horizon),
and spend it.

At the beginning of the month All my income goes into one account I then divided up the balance into the follow ledgers.

Gifting 10%
Save-Invest 15%
Spending 75%

As I go about the month spending if I find something I would normally purchase on sale or I use a coupon; I take the savings for each purchase and move it to the Save-Invest ledger. It is rare I spend the entire 75% allocated for spending.

Since I feel paying off debt is another form of savings I take 1/2 of the extra money that was moved into the saving and at the beginning of the next month use those extra funds to accelerate paying off our debts.

once all my debt is eliminated I will take that percentage out of the spending ledger and move it into investments.

If you take a moment to wrap your mind around this concept you will find it very easy to understand and if you were to play this game for 12 months you would be suprised how much your net worth will increase.

[FMF]

Alex --

Don't worry, we're saving/investing a TON. ;-)

["Mo" Money]

I like the giving, savomg, and spending idea. This is a great to teach kids the value of money. Start with 3 jars and each time they get money split it up 10% saving, 15% saving, and the rest for spending.

[Michael]

I love doing that. Our store tells us the same thing (probably the same store since I'm also from Michigan) and it's gotten to be that the favorite part of our shopping trip is seeing how much money we saved and how it compared to previous weeks. We also count the number of items that we pay regular price for, and try to keep it in single digits every week. That mentality has helped both my wife and I during shopping because we've actually guilted one another into putting something back because it would 'hurt' our numbers. Most times, we find that we don't miss the item or that it shows up on sale the next week anyways!

[Todd]

I typically feel like its hard to find coupons for the items that I buy. Because of that I feel like I might buy something I didn't think I needed before I had a coupon for it. In the end, I'm not sure coupons would beat just buying the generic store brand on everything. Have you done that comparison?

[Erica]

Spending $400 per month on groceries is great - we just took a look at our spending and realized we were spending $1000 per month on them (and we're only a family of three!). Anyway, shopping at stores that offer reward cards (like my market does) help me save ~25% each time I shop.

[Alex Ross]

Never meant to imply no one was saving enough. Just wanted to point out how important it is to have a plan for your savings or the savings will find there way out of your life.

[TinaY]

11 years ago we were spending $1200 per month. We were a new family with a new born. Granted diapers and formulas are very expensive, $1200 was just way too high. The following year, we became a family of 4 with twins and we were still at $1200 per month. We finally decided that we were going to do groceries twice a month as opposed to going to the groceries when we needed 1 or 2 items. We discovered that our incidental buys were about 40% of that $1200. Today, we are now a family of 7 and are down to a comfortable $600 - $700 per month. Reassessing your grocery spending habits can make that difference.

[Rich Schmidt]

@TinaY: Did you have a child wander off or something? You went from "a new family with a new born" (2 parents, 1 child) to "a family of 4 with twins" (2 parents, 2 children). ???

Back on topic: I have no idea what we spend on groceries each month. But my wife is frugal, and she does almost all the shopping, and we're still saving/investing and giving a ton, so I don't think I'll dig into it. :)