Pantry Stockpiling - A Method To Lower Food Expenses
I’ve been reading lately about a method of stockpiling your pantry as a way to lower your grocery expenses. Basically, your goal is to purchase a large enough quantity of items you usually use when they are on sale at the lowest price so you won’t need to purchase those items again until they are on sale at their lowest price again. This is based on the premise that sales on merchandise occur on a cyclical basis. Here is an example from my own grocery shopping experience and how am I building a stockpile of Cheerios (the favorite cereal in my house).
This past week Publix had a Buy One Get One Free Sale on Cheerios. I have several coupons good for $1 off when you purchase 2 boxes.
One Box of Cheerios at $4.99 (this is the large 20 ounce box) + one box of Cheerios free -
coupon of $1 off = $3.99 for 2 boxes of Cheerios (20 ounce size). This is equivalent to a total cost of $2 per box, or a savings of $2.99 per box of Cheerios. I then estimate how many boxes I will need to last until the next Buy One Get One Free Sale on Cheerios. I usually aim for 8 weeks as it seems like Cheerios goes on sale every 2 months or so. I use one box per week, so my goal is to stockpile 8 boxes to last me for this cycle until I can again purchase the Cheerios at a low price. By combining the Buy One Get One Free sale along with a manufacturer coupon, I can substantially lower my cost. Granted, you can only stockpile items based on your available storage space, but you can be creative with storage places if your pantry is small.
This method can be used for other grocery items as well. This is where keeping a good coupon storage method comes in handy. When you find coupons for items you regularly purchase, you’ll want to get as many as you can so that you can combine them with the good sales. Check the weekly sale ads for the Buy One Get One Free items, and combine them with store coupons and manufacturer coupons to get the lowest possible price.
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Unfortunately, I have to be very careful of this method. 34 years of marriage and children and grandchildren has established the truth of Warren’s Law: the fastest way to make everyone in the house quickly change their favorite cereal (or granola bar, or hot chocolate mix, or razors, or shampoo, or you-fill-in-the-blank) is to buy it in bulk. I do still buy in bulk–with nine children and a dozen frequently visiting grandchildren just about every purchase qualifies as “bulk”–but I don’t buy more than we can eat in a month or Warren’s Law comes into effect