The Grocery Game

Have you ever heard of the Grocery Game? Started a few years ago by Teri Gault in California, it is becoming a more and more popular way to save money on your grocery bill. But how do you play and is it worth it? Playing is easy, you have to decide if it is worth it. And thanks Amanda for telling me about it!

Basically, the Grocery Game matches up the coupons in each Sunday's paper with the sales going on at the grocery store of your choice. The Grocery Game does all the work for you finding the best sales of the week. Not all sales are advertised in the weekly paper, and the grocery game does a great job of hunting down the extra bargains out there.

Did you know that all grocery store sales go in cycles? Some food items cycle on sale each month, some every 6 weeks and some every 12 weeks. As a consumer, it is hard to keep track of how often something goes on sale. Purchasing items when they are at their lowest sale is the best way to save money on your grocery bill. But don't just buy enough for that week. Stockpile food items when they are at their lowest prices, so that you have enough to get your through until the next sale comes. This way you will never have to pay full price for things.

So how do you know when something is at its lowest price? The Grocery Game will tell you. The list that comes out each week will tell you which items are at a good sale price (black) and which items are at their lowest price (blue) - which means now would be a good time to stock up. The list also frequently has free items on it and these are in green. If you have a store that doubles coupons, which I highly recommend if you are going to do the Grocery Game, it is pretty easy to get free items each week.

So is the Grocery Game worth the money? It is free for the first 4 weeks. It costs $10 for an 8 week period for one store. Additional stores cost $5 per store. In your free trial, you can have as many stores as you want. Just make sure you downgrade before your free trial is over.
The trial is guaranteed to save you money according to Teri, and so far she has proven her point.

The first week, I saved $30 at the store for a total of $55. I have to admit, I shopped conservatively because I wasn't sure how this would work. Plus, no coupons came in our Sunday paper due to Labor day.

Today, our newspaper had 5 inserts of coupons! I spent half of my day comparing the grocery game's list to the coupons in the paper, clipping those I wanted to use today, saving those I'd use in the future, and then meal planning based on what I needed vs what I could get cheap with the coupons. Not everything I need has a coupon. For instance, we needed trash bags. Luckily at Harris Teeter, they were BOGO (buy one get one free). We eat a lot of pasta, and there was a coupon for $1.25 off 3 jars. All of those coupons with small values like 25, 50, 75 cents off are doubled at HT, so you end up saving more money. Today, I ended up with two free items. Spray n wash stain remover was BOGO plus there was a coupon in the paper today. It ended up totaling to 15 cents for two of them. I count that free for me! I have two items to get at Rite Aid tomorrow that I know will be free if not practically free too. One is Angel Soft toilet paper and the other is Airwick freshener.

Airwick Ultra Freshmatic Kit--$4.99
Use $6.00/1 coupon in the 09/13 insert
Free plus possible overage after coupon

Angel Soft Toilet Paper (4-pack)--$0.99
Use $0.50/1 coupon from the 9/13 RedPlum insert
$0.49 after coupon

Save your coupons for a few weeks before joining the Grocery Game. They use any coupon that has not expired on their lists each week. So they might have a coupon that is two months old on their list. Remember that the point of the game is to match up coupons to the lowest sale prices, so the coupons in this weeks paper are not all going to be used this week on the list. So save your coupon inserts for a few weeks to give you the most benefit when you try out the game.

Another tip is to not be brand specific. Don't just clip the few coupons that you think you might use. Save the whole insert and be willing to try different brands. If you can get an item for free, why not try it? Also, if your regular brand is full price this week, but you can get another brand for $.20, it is definitely worth trying.

I think the Grocery Game makes shopping the sales a lot easier and can very much be worth the money. Join for the trial membership and see how it works for you. It is super easy to cancel at any time and even if you do cancel, you will still learn a lot about how the grocery sales work and ideas on getting the best deals. These things alone are worth the free trial membership.

I'm definitely still learning. I would NEVER have time to do this research on my own. I use the grocery game list as well as other blogs (see in my list on the right) to guide me to the best deals. I'm only in week two of this. I hope I'll get better in time!

Helpful blogs:
http://thefreebieblogger.com/
http://www.moneysavingmom.com/money_saving_mom/
http://savingandgiving.blogspot.com/

P.S. I saved $45 this week on groceries for a total of $85.

portions of this posting were taking from
http://hubpages.com/hub/How_To_Play_the_Grocery_Game__Is_It_Worth_It