3 Tricks to do Before you Head to the Grocery Store to Save you Money

I have always been a hoarder of good recipe cut outs.  As soon as I see something I would like to try out from a magazine, I cut the recipe out and add it to my recipe collection.  My little recipe box is about to explode with slips of papers.  Groceries is one of our largest expense for our family of 4, a 11 year old  girl, Lauren, a 13 year old boy, Connor, and my hubby and I.    Sometimes it is not always practical to shop at the big discount stores, such as Costco to save money.  To be honest with you , I spend more money there just for the fact they have so much other cool stuff.  I always come back with many non-grocery items I had not planned on buying. There are many tricks I use to reduce our regular grocery bill, but a big one is that I use the flyer where I shop, to plan my menu.  We get the flyer in our local paper with all of our groceries stores in our area advertise in.  I pick one store a week with the best prices.  You could also find this information on-line.  Google your grocery store and than they will ask you for your zip code/ postal code for your weekly specials.  Just this week chicken thighs,ham, broccoli, black beans, whole wheat wraps, avocados and asparagus where dirt cheap at our local grocery store.  I will make sure 4-5 of our dinner meals would have those items in the recipe.   So for this week I have planned:

1. Skillet Chicken Caccitore with pasta
2. Spicy Black Bean Soup with buns
3. Green Eggs and Ham with Aspargus on the side
4. Meditarean Tuna Wraps with sliced avocados

I will have 1/2 of the ham left over so I will include it in sandwiches or in the weekend omlette. 

Trick #2 I am trying super hard to do is, DO NOT grocery shop mid-week.  This saves a bundle!  I know it is sometimes very diffucult with kids as they have their favorites but it really does work.  My husband, does however, do a midnight run for his favorite items that we have run out of, but this is OK because that is ALL he buys.  As long as it keeps me out of the shops, it works like a charm and saves more time to do other things I need to be doing.

Trick 3# Sign up for your local gorcery store newsletters, follow them on twitter and Like them on Facebook.  They will be able to inform you of all the specials that are coming up including and celebrations they may be having in the newsletter.  On twitter and Facebook they will give you even more at the moment specials, giveaways, contests, recipes, surveys and discounts. 

http://twitter.com/WholeFoods  – One of my all time favorite stores ever is on twitter and Facebook .  They are expensive but the quality and freshness is hard to beat so it is even more important to get the items on sale. 

Stay tuned for even more tips at the grocery store coming up.  Do you do the above?  How do you save money on your grocery expense?

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