Safeway Savings, July 2011

Grocery shopping is finished for the month, so here's the monthly recap again - because I enjoy boring my readers, of course.

$216.25 spent - down from the last two months, thanks to fewer BBQs - and when we did have them, we were able to get better deals on meat since they were on clearance.

$160.31 saved - or 42.57%. Not bad! I had one trip, for corn, where we saved 75.85%, but there were a few bummers in there, too.

So far, over the past four months, my grocery shopping tactics have saved us $630.60 dollars - or 3/4 of a mortgage payment! It doesn't seem like much each individual trip, but adding it up like that is amazing.

The thing I learned this week is that it's much better to go grocery shopping late in the evening. The store's less crowded, as it's after kids' bedtimes, but also for this important, money saving reason. Around 9PM, the meat/seafood departments are closed - which means THAT is the time of day that they're putting out the last of the "prepared" meat items - like the DELISH hamburger patties w/ bacon and cheddar cheese mixed in. Mmm. 50% off if you buy them late in the day!

I know I could do "better" at my grocery shopping if I were more diligent about looking for coupons - I'm pretty happy with the savings, though, given that I DON'T put much effort into it - maybe 10 minutes a WEEK.