My own personal secret, which I learned from my mother, is to combine coupons, coupon doubling, sales and rebates to get the best price on the food items we use most commonly. Now, with resources like eBay, I have improved upon my dear mother’s methods.
Here’s how it works for groceries and personal care products:
Say your family uses a lot of ketchup.
Go on ebay and search for heinz ketchup coupons.
Buy 20 of them for about $6.00.
Wait til Heinz Ketchup goes on sale at your local supermarket. This week, at mine, they are 2 big bottles for $5.
Buy about 20 bottles of Ketchup. $2.50 per bottle – $1.50 off per doubled coupon – – net cost $1.35 per bottle, about 1/3 of regular price.
I do this on shampoo, eggs, cereal, yogurt, spaghetti, salsa and many other items. I recently got brand name baby shampoo for $0.75 per bottle. I have enough to last me several years in the basement.
Of course, you need a lot of storage space if you buy this way, but the prices end up being 1/2 to 1/3 of the regular prices. Do this for your top 10 or 20 items, and you will end up saving thousands each year.
I would like to brag briefly: Once, I went shopping and got a large bag of groceries, and they PAID ME $8. This was the perfect storm combo of coupons, doubled coupons, sale and a manufacturer’s mail-in rebate. It doesn’t happen that often, so it’s sort of the hole-in-one of guerilla shopping.