I am a Foster Mom and as part of the kids Independent Living skills needing some work, we began reading the Sunday ads together. My habit is to go to Sam's Club once a week, and there is a Super Walmart right next door and along the way, I pass Food Lion, CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid and Food City. I could go from store to store without much extra traveling, but I have found by simply tracking the ads for the loss leaders, I can save money the easy way until I can get my price book more complete. I take the ads for any "loss leaders" with me on my shopping trip and when done at Sams, run next door to Walmart. I found my local Walmart will MATCH any price in the sales circular, as long as no coupon is needed and the brand is the same. So when I saw A & W Root Beer on sale at KMart (on the other side of town, no less!) 4 12 can packs for sale for $10, I was a happy camper. I headed to Walmart with the circular in hand and bought all they had and stocked my pantry (it also included the diet cherry Sprite, Sprite and Diet Rite Zero sodas). My local stores carried the same thing for anywhere from $3.08 a 12 pack to $4.98 a 12 pack. I got mine for $2.50 a 12 pack. It was the best deal I had ever seen on soda. Up until then, I might see 4 12 packs for $11, but never 4 for $10. And the other was a 12 pack of Scotts tp for $4.99 (making it less than .50 a roll). So I can get the sale price, without having to drive and stop at half a dozen stores. When I can't find that brand at Walmart, I make a point of scheduling a stop when in that area. If the one of the kids has therapy, we will hit the Salvage Store and Kmart. If its the Dr, then we can go to Kroger and so on. With gas now hovering around $3.50 a gallon, every penny counts. The kids are learning how to spot the real sales and the "fake" sales, and love helping me circle the ones that are GOFERS (we need to show the circulars) and writing on the front of the circulars, what deals are inside. By updating my price book on each shopping trip, I am finding lots of "deals" that aren't really that big of a deal, and some that are even better than I thought. We like to figure up what we saved when getting these items at the loss leader price VS paying the actual price, if we didn't have the circular. Last week, we bought stuff we wanted and needed, and just on the loss leader, we saved $33 + tax. And that was without doing anything more than checking the sales against the store that meets or beats the price. Hope this helps you!
