The Grocery Game

If you haven't heard of the The Grocery Game you're going to want to limit your distractions right now and give this a good read. Then, because you'll find this is such a Cool Idea, give yourself some time to go to the site and check it out. I'm telling you upfront you're going to like this.

The Grocery Game is a paid list. The 4 week trial is $1 and after that it's $10 every 8 weeks. It compiles the advertised and unadvertised specials at your grocery and/ or drugstore -you can subscribe to more than one store in your area for additional fees - into a weekly list. The principle is that there is a 12-week cycle in grocery business and when you know the cycle - which The Grocery Game does - you'll be able to buy what you need when it is at it's lowest price.

Another feature is that The Grocery Game has already found out which items have coupons and how much that coupon will save you. Isn't this amazing! Now you won't need to dig through all of your weekly ads and your coupons to determine which to use each week - you have The Grocery Game to do it for you. 

The feature that I particularly like is that it's color coded. Yep, I am attracted to color and it makes the list easy to use. Items on the list in black are good prices. Buy them if you need them now.  Items in blue are great prices and are for stockpiling. Items in green are FREE and you only pay sales tax on them. Yep, FREE. Mostly these will be items on special or with coupons but it's not unusual for there to be FREE items on the list each week. 

Increasing the stockpiling of items that your family regularly uses will cut down on your need to buy the items when they are full price. Buying them when they are at the least expensive point of the 12-week cycle, as determined by The Grocery Game, and with coupons - if there are any available - will save you money along the way. 

This sounds like a no-brainer. It sounds like something we could do on our own, doesn't it. Have you tried? Maybe you could, but I can't. I can barely do it with The Grocery Game. I've been signed up with The Grocery Game for a year now and I love it. I'll admit though that I haven't been a faithful player for the entire time. For the first nine months I used it mostly as a grocery list. That's not a bad way to do it, it's just not the optimum way to do it. I found some great deals but I didn't maximize The List.

Starting this past fall I began subscribing to the newspaper so that I could get the coupons each Sunday and really take the shopping seriously. Taking a look at the pantry space, here are some of things I see that I now have stockpiled: diapers, Pull-ups, toothpaste, bath gel, shampoo, soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, brown sugar, canned tomatoes [some diced, some with chiles, some with onions], dried pasta, pasta sauce, Goldfish crackers, cake mix, cereal, mayonnaise, salad dressing, chocolate chips, tomato soup, mushroom soup, chicken soup - well, you get the gist. [And you probably figured out that I have two small kids!]

What else can I tell you? Go check it out at The Grocery Game. If you decide to sign up, I'd appreciate it if you use me as a referral. [My email of record is sgurnsey@yahoo.com]

I think you'll find that it's a very Cool Idea. It combines the use of coupons with stockpiling with the natural flow of the grocery store cycle. And there's nothing I like better than using the ebb and flow of the system to benefit the consumer.