"Never Be the Same Again"
"Faaaah, fah-fah, fah, fah, fah, fah, fah, never be the same again." (Ok, if you've never heard Guster, that made absolutely no sense) Today I finally did something that I'd been pondering and pondering about doing, but never took the time or mustered up the courage to do. I price matched!
What's price matching, you ask? It's when you find a lower price for a particular item in an ad, then go to your own grocery store, show them that ad with their competitor's lower priced item, and the cashier rings you up for that lower price! It's amazing! It's ridiculous! Why have I never done this before?!? (oh, yeah, cuz I was too lazy and too chicken before. Oh well.) It's not as scary or as difficult as it may have sounded before.
I admit, I was a little leery of the idea of waltzing into my neighborhood Walmart and getting incredible discounts purely by showing the cashier an ad. What makes me think that I'm that special? Don't you have to, like, know someone high up to get special treatment or exceptions like that? Apparently not. It really was just that easy, and grocery shopping will never be the same again for me.
Here's how it went down. First, I got inspired. I was reading my ward's Self Reliant Sisters website, admiring the list of grocery deals that my friend, Lisa, had already fingered and posted (she's sooooo awesome). There were deals floating around like .99 for 1 pound of strawberries or Fuji apples for .49 per pound. It sounded too good to be true. So, I figured I'd go see for myself. Goodness knows that produce can cost a FORTUNE - and I've been trying really hard to eat my 5 fruits and veg a day. That can really add up.
So, I went to my mailbox and picked through my mail. Low and behold, it included some newspapery-type ads for grocery stores and local markets. (Now, I don't subscribe to anything, nor do I receive a newspaper. This is purely the sort of stuff that I would have otherwise just tossed as junk mail.) Rather than just toss them as junk mail, though, I actually looked at them. That is when I realized that there were some KILLER deals out there for this next week. The website had not overexaggerated. There are Mexican markets with produce that is beyond cheap! Even places like Albertson's, Smith's, Vons and Fresh 'n Easy had the occasional ACTUAL deal. (You DO have to sort of know a thing or two about how much things usually go for - just cuz it's LABELLED as a sale don't make it so!) I saw things like oranges going for .99 for 7 pounds. (Yes, I said 7 POUNDS of oranges for 99 cents! That breaks down to about .13 per pound, when Walmart is selling them for 48 cents each!)
Then I took a deep breath (cuz I was still wondering if I had the guts to pull this thing off), I grabbed by black pen and started circling. Things that I would buy - apples, oranges, lettuce, strawberries, potatoes, even eggs, canned veggies, tuna and cereal! (Ah, that infamous foodstuff that is consumed like water in this household, but usually goes for $3.50 a box. Zoinks!) I made up my grocery list, grouping the price match items by store ad, then just listing the rest of my necessities.
Done! No coupon clipping necessary. I'll admit that I did do a little bit of printing, though. The Self Reliant Sisters website had some markets listed that I did not receive ads for, but if you print them off the internet that works, too!
Off to the market I went with my stack of ads and my grocery list in hand. I went to it as I normally would. I weighed my produce to make sure I knew what I was working with. When the store priced their oranges PER orange rather than by the pound, I also did a little bit of calculating (again, you want to make it as plug and chug as possible when you go to check out). I made sure that products like the tuna and cereal matched the ads exactly. Then I looked for a cashier.
Now my friends had given me a little 411 on cashier profiling. Apparently male cashiers don't typically do well with price matching. Young folks don't usually have enough experience to even know what it is let alone how to do it. They said that if the cashier already looks grumpy that's a bad sigh, too. The ideal is a seasoned, cheerful looking lady. So, of course when I walk in, there is only one register open and the cashier is a guy. Hmph. Thankfully, my jitters went away after I'd finished collecting my groceries, returned to the front of the store and saw a pleasant looking lady manning a second register. Hallelujah!
From there, I simply put onto the conveyor belt all of my regular priced items first, followed by the price matched items grouped according to store ad, along with the actual ads. I let the cashier know that those were my price matching items, and she just said "alright". As those items came up, I showed her the circled sales in the ads and told her the break down for pricing and she just made the corrections and rung it up! IT WAS AWESOME!
I don't think I've ever bought so much produce at one time, but I just couldn't beat the prices! I spent LESS and got MORE! I can't tell you how pumped I was walking out of that store.
So, now my eyes have been opened to a whole new way of grocery shopping. I don't have to clip coupons or do a ton of research. It really was only a matter of paying attention to those ads, circling the deals on things I would already buy as I'm making out my grocery list, and then showing the ads to the cashier. That's it. I love it. :)
What's price matching, you ask? It's when you find a lower price for a particular item in an ad, then go to your own grocery store, show them that ad with their competitor's lower priced item, and the cashier rings you up for that lower price! It's amazing! It's ridiculous! Why have I never done this before?!? (oh, yeah, cuz I was too lazy and too chicken before. Oh well.) It's not as scary or as difficult as it may have sounded before.
I admit, I was a little leery of the idea of waltzing into my neighborhood Walmart and getting incredible discounts purely by showing the cashier an ad. What makes me think that I'm that special? Don't you have to, like, know someone high up to get special treatment or exceptions like that? Apparently not. It really was just that easy, and grocery shopping will never be the same again for me.
Here's how it went down. First, I got inspired. I was reading my ward's Self Reliant Sisters website, admiring the list of grocery deals that my friend, Lisa, had already fingered and posted (she's sooooo awesome). There were deals floating around like .99 for 1 pound of strawberries or Fuji apples for .49 per pound. It sounded too good to be true. So, I figured I'd go see for myself. Goodness knows that produce can cost a FORTUNE - and I've been trying really hard to eat my 5 fruits and veg a day. That can really add up.
So, I went to my mailbox and picked through my mail. Low and behold, it included some newspapery-type ads for grocery stores and local markets. (Now, I don't subscribe to anything, nor do I receive a newspaper. This is purely the sort of stuff that I would have otherwise just tossed as junk mail.) Rather than just toss them as junk mail, though, I actually looked at them. That is when I realized that there were some KILLER deals out there for this next week. The website had not overexaggerated. There are Mexican markets with produce that is beyond cheap! Even places like Albertson's, Smith's, Vons and Fresh 'n Easy had the occasional ACTUAL deal. (You DO have to sort of know a thing or two about how much things usually go for - just cuz it's LABELLED as a sale don't make it so!) I saw things like oranges going for .99 for 7 pounds. (Yes, I said 7 POUNDS of oranges for 99 cents! That breaks down to about .13 per pound, when Walmart is selling them for 48 cents each!)
Then I took a deep breath (cuz I was still wondering if I had the guts to pull this thing off), I grabbed by black pen and started circling. Things that I would buy - apples, oranges, lettuce, strawberries, potatoes, even eggs, canned veggies, tuna and cereal! (Ah, that infamous foodstuff that is consumed like water in this household, but usually goes for $3.50 a box. Zoinks!) I made up my grocery list, grouping the price match items by store ad, then just listing the rest of my necessities.
Done! No coupon clipping necessary. I'll admit that I did do a little bit of printing, though. The Self Reliant Sisters website had some markets listed that I did not receive ads for, but if you print them off the internet that works, too!
Off to the market I went with my stack of ads and my grocery list in hand. I went to it as I normally would. I weighed my produce to make sure I knew what I was working with. When the store priced their oranges PER orange rather than by the pound, I also did a little bit of calculating (again, you want to make it as plug and chug as possible when you go to check out). I made sure that products like the tuna and cereal matched the ads exactly. Then I looked for a cashier.
Now my friends had given me a little 411 on cashier profiling. Apparently male cashiers don't typically do well with price matching. Young folks don't usually have enough experience to even know what it is let alone how to do it. They said that if the cashier already looks grumpy that's a bad sigh, too. The ideal is a seasoned, cheerful looking lady. So, of course when I walk in, there is only one register open and the cashier is a guy. Hmph. Thankfully, my jitters went away after I'd finished collecting my groceries, returned to the front of the store and saw a pleasant looking lady manning a second register. Hallelujah!
From there, I simply put onto the conveyor belt all of my regular priced items first, followed by the price matched items grouped according to store ad, along with the actual ads. I let the cashier know that those were my price matching items, and she just said "alright". As those items came up, I showed her the circled sales in the ads and told her the break down for pricing and she just made the corrections and rung it up! IT WAS AWESOME!
I don't think I've ever bought so much produce at one time, but I just couldn't beat the prices! I spent LESS and got MORE! I can't tell you how pumped I was walking out of that store.
So, now my eyes have been opened to a whole new way of grocery shopping. I don't have to clip coupons or do a ton of research. It really was only a matter of paying attention to those ads, circling the deals on things I would already buy as I'm making out my grocery list, and then showing the ads to the cashier. That's it. I love it. :)
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