Stockpiling groceries can be a life saver and money saver. There have been times when the money just was not in our budget to shop for lots of food and I could go shopping for free in my own pantry at home. Here are some tips to follow if you want to start stockpiling.
1. Look at what you use. So your local store is selling macaroni and cheese at $1 a box and you have a $1 off coupon. Making it free. My first reaction would be to buy up as much as I can, but do I use it? If you know you are not going to use a product, even if it is free, don't buy it. Leave it for someone else who needs to save money that does eat macaroni & cheese, or if you do buy it and know you will not use it, donate it to someone who will use it. Figure out what product you regularly use, what you might spend the most money on and see how you can stockpile those products while saving the most money.
2. Learn the store sales. I have discussed before the fact that stores run sales on a 12 week cycle. Read more about this HERE. This week cereal may be $1 a box, which is the lowest you have seen it in, well, 12 weeks. Because that is the lowest it will be for the next 12 weeks. Start tracking sale cycles and when you have them down plan your stockpile shopping around those sales. Also learn to take advantage of CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens and all the drug stores that offer ECB's, refunds and Register Rewards for buying a certain product and build up toiletry stockpiles that way. For example, this week CVS had Band-Aids on sale for $2.99 get $2 ECB back, I had a $1 off any Band-Aid coupon, so after my coupon, total was $2, I got back $2 ECB to use in the store, the limit was 2, so I took my $2 ECB and my other $1 coupon and rolled it into another box of Band-Aids, so for $2 I bought two boxes.
3. Watch coupons in the paper and hold onto them. My newspaper had coupons nearly weekly for a free Small Steps paper product, a new brand of toilet paper/towels from Marcal. I saw those coupons and said "hmm, I can't find this brand anywhere", I went to the website and it did not show any stores selling it near me. So I did NOT save the coupons! Sure enough, at the store I shop at nearly every day, I saw it on the shelves! But I had no coupons to get it free, rolls and rolls of toilet paper sitting there on the store shelf that could have been sitting in my stockpile. Had I saved my coupons I would have had a good stash of toilet paper right now. Also, this weeks Sunday supplement may have coupons for mustard, but no mustard is on sale this week, watch your store flyer, within the following weeks that mustard WILL be on sale. Most coupons are matched to a product going on sale, just not that particular week the coupon comes out. Like I said, sale cycles go every 12 weeks, so the stores have everything planned out. This is all part of learning the store sale cycles. So hold onto your coupons, there is not even a need to cut them individually out, save the entire insert and cut as needed for store sales.
4. Pay attention to what you buy and its dates. Canned products and many boxed products will last a long time, but even so, if you buy 100 cans of condensed milk then I hope you own a bakery or plan to make lots of Christmas goodies. Just because something is a good deal do not stockpile it only to have to waste it because you did not use before the expiration date.
5. Look at your stockpiling options. By this I mean look at what you can stockpile. Fresh strawberries go on sale, but you think if I buy 4 containers they will go bad before I use them. You can freeze them and save for another time, they do not have to sit in your refrigerator until they go bad. Meat is one of my favorites to stockpile since my grocery store frequently has manager specials and you will get $1 or more off meat and I immediately take it home and put it in the freezer. Freezing, as you can read HERE, is a safe and great option for almost all your foods.
6. Keep your stockpiles up to date and know what you have. My pantry gets to a certain point sometimes where food looks like it is overflowing out of it but really I just shove my boxes and cans in there with no rhyme or reason. When I get brave enough to clean my pantry I end up with a whole empty shelf, for one reason because everything has been neatly organized and for another, because I suddenly find lots of expired products sitting in there that I or someone I could have given it to lose out on using. You need to keep your stockpiles neat and organized and if you can stack them by expiration's do that, if something is close to expiration keep it at the front so you use it first. Keep track of what you have so you don't waste your time, money or energy buying more of it if you don't need to. If you see you have 10 boxes of macaroni and know you rarely eat it, you know not to bother buying it at the store since you already have plenty.
7. If you want to start stockpiling be ready to possibly spend a little money. Lets use the macaroni and cheese, it goes on sale $2 a box from its normal price of $3 a box, you have $1 off coupons. You have followed store sales and know this weeks price is as low as it will go and you want to buy 10 boxes, but even with your $1 off coupons, you don't want to spend $10 on the macaroni because you think "why do I need 10 boxes right now". Spending the $10 now saves you in the long run. So you only buy 2 boxes the week it is on its lowest sale, now next week you run out of macaroni and need to go back and buy it at regular price, or even if it is a different sale price you still missed out on the lowest price it will go, so you are spending more money overall and not only are you spending more money, but what if you didn't even need to go to the store, what about gas money you waste driving to the store. Wouldn't it be easier and more convenient to just go in your own closet and grab the macaroni instead of run around finding it on a store shelf somewhere?
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