Saving Money: Price Matching

The other day I had my oldest with me when we went grocery shopping. This is a rarity for usually I shop when she is at school or she is the one staying home to babysit. After many years of always shopping with kids it is so nice when I don't have to. Any way, as we shopped I took the opportunity to share a little of what I do in terms of grocery shopping.

I shop at Walmart a lot. This wasn't always the case. In fact, I hated shopping at Walmart for I felt like I could always find things cheaper at other stores. Then I had a friend turn me on to price matching. I still wasn't sold until after many attempts and learning some things a long the way. Now it's a blessing to do one stop shopping. I know this won't help some of you for you don't have a Walmart near by but here's a little of what I shared with my daughter. She even commented on some things that the people in front of us didn't do and how things weren't quite as smooth for them.

Preparation

This is before you even go to the store. I lay out all the ads and go through them one by one. (I know there are some sites that do this for you but I never really found one that worked for me. It seems I spent more time trying to find a site I liked, figure them out and often they missed some of my favorite local stores/ads).

On each stores ad I mark items we need with a big red X. If I find that item cheaper in another ad then I will cross off the X on the more expensive ad.

Generally I am looking for two things.

• Items we need to replace in our food storage (which is mostly what I buy). You know good deal items that I stock up on. 
• Things on sale that week, that I don't stock in our food storage, which I meal plan around. 

After I have marked all the ads I take a piece of paper and go through each ad writing down what I have marked. I list the item, size, price (make sure to include if it's per lb) and what store.

I then go through my coupons. I'm not a major coupon user but I do keep coupons I get in the mail and will print out some coupons. I keep all of these in a binder. I go through and see if any coupons match up with sale items. If I have a coupon I make sure I mark on my list "coupon" and write the number of items I need to buy to meet the coupon.

I then take the coupons I'm going to use out of my binder and put them with my grocery list in a sheet protector. I put the ads in my coupon binder. Generally I bring my binder into the store for the off chance I find something on sale that matches another coupon. Plus the binder has my ads. Walmart's current policy is you don't have to have the ads with you. I have found, though, that just having my ads in the cart and a list of pricing I rarely get questioned. Unlike the lady in front of us last week that was just saying prices from memory.  My daughter picked up on that. Plus, having a list of the prices take less time then looking through each ad saying the prices as you go. So much nicer for the customers behind.

Shopping

• Carry a pen. Occasionally I find an item cheaper at Walmart so I cross that item off my list so I know not to price match

• Cart. Put any items you are price matching in the same place in the cart. I put all of mine towards the back.

• Conveyor belt. Put all the items you aren't price matching on first. This way the checker can start to scan your items first while you are still loading. I let the checker know from a certain item on back it's all price match.  Try to keep similar items together. 

*Note on coupons. Most checkers want the coupons at the end. However, if you have a buy one get one most of these coupons require the checker to write in the price so give these coupons to the checker with the item.Saves time later for they have to look up the price.

Brands.

Generally I am not a name brand person (except for a few items). I will buy generic or store brands because they are cheaper. One of the main reasons I didn't like price matching originally was I could never find the brand advertised. Walmart will substitute their store brand for the advertised brand. For example if it's Western Family on sale then buy Walmart's store brand (Great Value). I haven't found any difference in the quality of food.

Produce.

Walmart used to be price per item and not per lb. Ads are often per lb so I hated price matching. Walmart has changed a lot of this and checkers/scanners are a lot better at making this conversion. To know which is a better deal use the scale. Weigh the item (say cantaloupe) to figure out the lbs. Times this by the advertized per lb price and see which is cheaper- walmart's price or the ad. All you have to do when checking out is just say the price per lb.

Meat.

This is the one area I still don't price match a lot. Every store is different on what they price match. If I do price match I just make sure what I buy is labeled exactly the same as the sales ad.( ie if it says center cut pork chops I make sure that what I buy is labeled center cut). 

Happy Shopping!