Reply to teach me how to shop and save

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[quote=Anonymous]The Just-4-U program was the last straw for me and despite the Safeway being walking distance from my house, after 20 years of shopping there, I don't go.

The Just-4-U program requires me to spend extra time hunting through the various "deals" on my cell phone to find things to "save" on and even with the coupons, sometimes the sales are just not that great.  Also, the WiFi in our Safeway sucks and I always have problems with the signal.  So I end up having to move to the front of the store and stand by the window to get a 3G signal so that I can look for coupons.  I can't just find the coupons for items while I'm in the aisles looking.

I've found that I can save more time and money going to both SFW and Giant than with the Just4U program.

Back on-topic:

Start by planning meals.  On Saturday, I loosely plan meals.  We generally have Sunday meal, Monday meal and then Sunday leftovers on Tuesday and Monday leftovers on Wednesday so have 4 days covered.  Thursday is often a prepackaged meal like a skillet stir-fry, backed casserole or something easy like stuffed chicken breasts for us and chicken nuggets for the kids.  Most Fridays we go out to eat.  Saturday various a lot week to week.

So, I generally plan on Saturdays and I come up with a shopping list of ingredients that I'll need.  I get my ground beef in the 5 lb packages, separate into 1.25 lb portions and freeze.  When I need, I just take one out and defrost.  If I think about it the night before, I can put it in the fridge to defrost, but most of the time, I don't remember and end up defrosting in the microwave.  When planning the meals, I try to see if there are things that I can use for more than one meal so that I can buy a larger more economy size of something.  For example, if I make a stir-fry and want to use red pepper, I try to think of something that I can use red pepper in so that I can get the 3-pack which is cheaper.  So maybe salads or pizza (we love red peppers on our pizza).

As another PP suggested, try to come up with pantry staples of things that you use alot that are shelf stable that you can buy larger quantities of.  For example, some dried herbs come in larger containers that are cheaper by quantity than the small bottles.  Or flour or sugar.

The trick for me is to plan out what I need to buy and what I will use and figuring out how to use any unused portions of containers before they go bad.  It takes times to learn to plan, but you can save.[/quote]

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