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We have talked about saving at the grocery store briefly.  But, I would like to give you an example of savings that count.

Last week one of our local grocery stores ran a special on split chicken breasts.  The price was $ .99 a pound if you had a store card, one of those cards that allows its holder to take advantage of the special pricing.  When we got to the store, each of the packages contained between three and five chicken breasts. 

We could have purchased a package of five for about $5.53.  We would have purchased enough chicken for our family for this week.  But, knowing that the price of chicken has gone up exponentially lately and also knowing that sales like this one are getter fewer and father between, we purchased 8 packages of chicken breasts. 

The total came up to $45.89, but with the store discount card, we paid $18.17.  We saved over $25 and have enough chicken to last us for a few months. 

Is there a benefit?  We think so.  We can feed our family chicken breasts one night a week for twenty weeks.  In other words we won’t have to buy chicken again until next year.  The cost was less than half the regular price. 

Again, we must state that if you don’t eat chicken, there would be no point in buying chicken breasts if they were $ .39 a pound.  But, if you do eat chicken, as my family does, it was a great buy.  We realized immediate savings.

This is just one example, but any time you can use a store discount card to save at least 30% on something you regularly purchase, we suggest that you buy enough to last long enough for the next sale to roll around.  If you watch your store’s flyers, you probably know about how often they put certain things on sale.  In this specific case, it has been three months since we found chicken for $ .99 a pound.  We bought enough to get us to the next expected sale date.

What to look for:

• Savings of at least 30%.  We usually try to find a 50% savings, but will settle for 30%.
• Only buy items that you use regularly.  If you don’t ordinarily use the item, don’t trick yourself into believing that you will use it now.  You won’t and instead of saving, you will be throwing money away.