I don’t very often clip coupons, but I’m a dedicated user of the Publix “buy one, get one free” promotions. And nothing annoys me more than stocking up on something only to see it go BOGO the next week.
Then I realized that BOGO promotions, and other supermarket discounts, run in cycles, with certain items going on sale every three months. Once I learned that, I started waiting to stock up.
Sure enough, I discovered that I can almost always get a BOGO deal on cereal, tea bags, granola bars, salad dressing, snack crackers and frozen dinners. Other frequent sale items include canned tomatoes, name-brand toilet paper and paper towels, soda and ice cream. Meat also has predictable sales cycles.
Really dedicated bargain hunters keep a price book to track how often their favorite items go on sale and at what price, so they know what bargains to wait for. Coupon clippers can save even more by holding manufacturers’ coupons to use when items are on sale. (Many products go on sale about a month after the coupons come out in the newspaper.)
Online resources for bargain hunters include GroceryGame.com ($5 a month per store) and CouponMom.com (free), which match coupons to store sales, IHeartPublix.com, which provides additional information about savings at that chain, and SouthernSavers.com, which does the same for Winn-Dixie, Walgreen’s, CVS and Target.
If you pay attention to sales cycles, you can save at least 50 percent on items you were going to buy anyway. That’s better than you could do clipping coupons, though no one says you can’t do both and save more.
