I used to have a friend who called me Suze. As in Suze Orman, the financial guru. 🙂 I used to LOVE books about finance, the stock market, living frugally, investing wisely, giving generously, and so on (I thought I might want to be a financial advisor someday…). Well, with all the craziness of my life in the past couple of years, I’ve sort of gotten so spoiled and lazy as to shop at the EXPENSIVE grocery store in town without so much as a LIST! because it seems I’m always in too much of a rush lately to really shop and compare prices and clip coupons. Well, with the ever-escalating PRICE. OF. GAS. UGH! Guess what, friends…..SUZE IS BACK. I’ve become re-aquainted with clipping coupons and scouring sales fliers. What a THRILL it is!! And how could I have forgotten how much fun that is?? Am I crazy??

So recently I found out about The Grocery Game . I think I had looked into it once before, but at the time there were no stores within this zip code, but now, there are!

The FABULOUS news is that they are giving away a $1 free one-month trial right now! You sign up and enter your zip code, and they tell you the specials at your local stores. The one-month trial is a long enough to see how much $$ you can expect to save.

The Grocery Game basically matches up what’s on special at your local stores with coupons that are in the local paper and sales fliers, etc., then prints a list of what you can get for free by combining sales/coupons, what is cheap enough to stock up on, and what is a good price. You CAN do this on your own, but sometimes I’m not sure what a ‘good price’ is….is it good a good enough price to go ahead and buy 3 of them, and that sort of thing, but she compares the prices against her database to know if prices are likely to be cheaper or if this is the best possible deal, and she will let you know by color-coding your shopping list, whether you should go ahead and stock up, or only buy it if you need it ’cause it might get cheaper later.

So far I’ve been a member a week and shopped at only 2 stores, and here’s what I saved at ONLY TWO STORES:

CVS…(and did you know they have groceries at CVS and Walgreens? I didn’t…)
Spent $45.33
Saved $15.05 combining coupons and specials
Got back $23.75 in Extra Care Bucks, which is like free money to use on my next transaction.
So basically $60.38 in merchandise for $36.63.

Then at Walgreens…
Spent $20.27
Saved $14.93 coupons/specials
Will get $3.68 back in rebates
So basically $35.20 in merchandise for $16.59.

Several things at both stores were free….light bulbs and paper plates, for example. The money I saved at my first two stops MORE than paid for my Grocery Game membership for more than three months, and I haven’t even been to the FOOD grocery store yet.

All in all worth at least the $1 trial period, and if you refer 3 people you get more weeks for free. So if you feel so inclined to let them know I referred you, EMAIL ME!

What with the price of gas, we can all use all the help we can get, right? Happy bargain shopping…..and let me know what kind of deals you’re able to get!!!