Product Review: the Grocery Game

Like most men I find shopping to be more of a chore than a hobby. My wife would disagree. Until just recently she did the majority of the grocery shopping while I just picked up a few of the necessities during the week. Several weeks ago we agreed we were spending too much on food and decided to budget our groceries. We did spend less money overall, but mostly by buying less food, not by finding the best deals. That was until I finally found a way to make grocery shopping fun for us guys, too.

Four Week Trial
While surfing around the message boards at Dave Ramsey's website I noticed several people who were participating in something called The Grocery Game. Apparently, The Grocery Game was a website offering a shopping list for your local stores highlighting the best deals for that particular week. By clipping coupons and matching them to weekly store specials you could save some big bucks. Being the natural skeptic I am, I reluctantly agreed to a four-week trial membership for $1.00. At the end of that trial period my subscription was to continue at the rate of $10 every eight week period. Not a bad deal, I thought. We started The Grocery Game the first weekend in April.

Coupon Hunting
Our first mission was to locate coupons, and lots of them. We bought a Sunday paper and found two coupon circulars included with the store advertisements. We clipped every single coupon and organized them by grocery section (breads, dairy, cereal, frozen, etc.). We also asked my mom to hold on to her coupons so we could double-up on certain products. The coupons were filed away in a canceled check organizer I picked up for a couple bucks at an office supply store.