Frugal | Reduce a Bill Challenge - Reducing My Grocery Bill

Reduce a Bill Challenge - Reducing My Grocery Bill

Posted by Lynnae on October 4, 2007

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Apparently Momof3 at Working for Financial Freedom was inspired by my family’s success in not eating out for a month.  In response, she has started the Reduce a Bill Challenge.  This month she is going to line dry her clothes to reduce her electric bill.  I think her challenge is a great idea, and I’m going to play along with her!

Unfortunately I can’t line dry clothes right now, because I live in Oregon, the rainy state, and I have absolutely no room indoors to line dry my clothes.  Instead I’m going to work on my grocery bill.  I’ve been inspired by the posts on bulk buying at I’ve Paid for this Twice Already, and I think I’m going to give stockpiling another try.

In the past I’ve had trouble with bulk buying because of our lack of storage.  I think my problem can be solved by doing two things.  First, I’m not going to stockpile bulky items like toilet paper and napkins.  Instead, I will try to reduce our use of paper products.  Obviously that won’t work with toilet paper, but we can reduce our napkin and paper towel usage.

Second, I need a good organizational system for my pantry.  I recently asked how to organize a pantry on my other blog, and I received some great ideas in response.  I’m going to put a few of them to the test.  I may head to the dollar store for some baskets to separate like items, and I think I’ll be on the lookout for inexpensive plastic storage containers, too.

Since I’m not that great at matching coupons with sale items (in other words, I’m too impatient to do it myself), I signed up for a trial of The Grocery Game.  The trial is only a dollar for four weeks, so that should be ample time to decide if it works for me.   And since I hate driving around town to shop at different stores, I’m going to shop at two stores:  My Grocery Game store for the rock-bottom prices and my regular low price grocery store.

So we’ll see how it goes.  My goal is to keep the grocery bill under $400 including paper products.  It’s going to be difficult, but after not eating out for a month, I feel like I can do anything!

Are you going to participate in the Reduce a Bill Challenge?  If so, head over to Working for Financial Freedom and let Momof3 know!

If you haven’t tried The Grocery Game and would like to sign up for the free trial, I would love it if you would put my email address in as a referral!  beingfrugal at gmail dot com.  If you are already a member of the grocery game, I’d love to hear your experiences!

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Filed Under Finances, Shopping |

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Comments

21 Responses to “Reduce a Bill Challenge - Reducing My Grocery Bill”

  1. Heidi on October 4th, 2007 10:57 am

    I think I’ll at least go check it out. Good luck!

  2. Carrie on October 4th, 2007 11:04 am

    Lynnae, ya know what brings me down? We live in a dinky 1 store town and it’s DEFINATELY not cost effective to drive half an hour to 45 minutes ONE WAY to go to cheaper stores, except like once a month or so. But I hate KNOWING full well that I am paying a much higher price for things…UGH…LOL!! I do well and pat myself on the back for keeping our grocery bill under 700 a month!!!!

  3. Erin on October 4th, 2007 11:08 am

    Thanks for the link to my challenge, maybe we’ll have some others join us.

    I’ll be interested to see how you like the Grocery Game. I think you already know I love it :)

  4. Lynnae on October 4th, 2007 11:10 am
    Thanks, Heidi!

    Carrie, that definitely isn’t worth it. These days you’d only be wasting your time, because you’d spend the difference in gas. Fortunately my two stores are near each other, so it doesn’t make any difference to me.

  5. Lynnae on October 4th, 2007 11:12 am
    Erin, I’m skeptical, because our stores don’t double coupons. However, I saw that cereal was on sale for $1 a box, and I thought if I had a coupon….that’s a pretty good deal. If I can find deals like that consistently, I’ll be a happy camper!
  6. Melissa on October 4th, 2007 1:47 pm

    Try http://www.couponmom.com - it’s free. It has a list that is similar to the Grocery Game and includes CVS, Walgreens, etc. She asks that you purchase an item that can be donated to charity rather than charging a fee.

  7. Lynnae on October 4th, 2007 1:57 pm
    @Melissa - I really love couponmom, but she doesn’t anything for Oregon. I keep waiting for her to put Oregon on the list, but until then, I have to use the Grocery Game.

    That is a great suggestion for people who don’t live in Oregon though!

  8. Heather on October 4th, 2007 4:02 pm

    This is such a Great idea! I am going to head over to Mom of 3s blog right now, I am going to try a No Spend day challenge, see how many no spend days I can have for this month! :)

    I never would have thought of this without your post, and I get to check out a new blog too!

    Thanks :)

  9. Erin on October 4th, 2007 5:49 pm

    Couponmom is great but they one thing they don’t do that the grocery game does is tell you what the unadvertised sales are (except for maybe the unadvertised deals at Ralphs) and they don’t tell you what is a good deal or not. They will match up everything in the sales ad to the available coupons. But their list doesn’t tell you if it’s a good price to stock up on.
    If you use Couponmom I suggest also using http://www.Hotcouponworld.com with it. It’s a free msg board. Go to the section for the store you shop in and you can find more deals.

    Lynnae,
    $1 a box is pretty good for cereal! I try to pay $1 or less a box.
    How much is milk in Oregon? I have a friend here that moved from Oregon a year ago. She said milk was way cheaper there. We have double and triple coupons, but you have cheaper milk :) We pay $3.49+ here a gallon.

  10. Boomeyers on October 4th, 2007 8:54 pm

    I use MyGroceryDeals.com http://www.mygrocerydeals.com/.....yrAlrtAUTO
    It is free and I love being able to make a grocery list from this!

  11. Mary on October 4th, 2007 10:51 pm

    Thanks for such a fantasitc idea! I checked out Working for financial freedom and I’m in for No Spending Days. I’m not sure I’ve got enough organization this month for an entire month of No Spending, but I will definitely work to match Heather’s 10 day No Spend goal. Great inspiration!

  12. Lynnae on October 5th, 2007 7:53 am
    Thanks for all the great suggestions, and I’m glad more people are joining this challenge! That will make it more fun, and anything we can do to make saving money more fun is a great thing in my book!
  13. Paula on October 5th, 2007 8:02 am

    I was excited last night to pay 1.50 for the LARGE box of cheerios (loss leader + coupons). My dh and kids were excited too, because I bought cereal!

  14. Lynnae on October 5th, 2007 8:07 am
    @Paula - Great buy! What do you usually have for breakfast? We eat way too much cereal, and I’m always looking for new breakfast ideas.
  15. paidtwice on October 5th, 2007 10:29 am

    Thanks for mentioning me and my bulk buying projects :)

    I am hoping to also get on the coupon wagon but we’ll see how well I do :)

  16. Paula on October 6th, 2007 9:30 am

    We usually eat hot cereal like oatmeal, malt O meal, grits, or eggs. Cold cereal is only for weekends when I sleep in or during the summer if I can get good prices.

    PS, I’m going to sign up for the grocery game using your referral, but I’m going to wait till you decide on full membership. The FAQs say you can’t use referrals for trial membership.

Trackbacks

  1. Super Savings Saturday #1 | beingfrugal.net
  2. How’s the “Reduce a Bill” Challenge Going? | Working For Financial Freedom
  3. October “Reduce a Bill” Challenge Review | Working For Financial Freedom
  4. October - The Final Numbers and a Public Declaration | beingfrugal.net
  5. November Reduce-a-Bill Challenge - The Grocery Bill, Part 2 | beingfrugal.net

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