The Grocery Game

(On a totally unrelated note, FB just pointed out that OB is giving a way Free Purse Packs of their tampons)

If you’ve been perusing the frugal blogs, you’ve probably heard about the Grocery Game. For the uninitiated, the Grocery Game does all the work of a price book, giving you a list of items that are at their lowest prices that week along with telling you which coupons to use. You could track the prices yourself, but for me at least the opportunity cost for my time is much higher than the $10 for 8 weeks (plus $5 for every additional store) the Grocery Game charges.

We’ve had fairly good results thus far, but nothing near the 60% they claim.* If you’re a savvy shopper already, you’ll probably be saving more like an extra 10-20% off your bill, but every little bit counts. For example, we’ve saved an extra $20 the last time we went shopping. I already had perused the local circular and cherry picked the items I wanted, but then I looked at the Grocery Game list and realized I had totally missed that frozen vegetables on sale ($10 saved), the yogurt sale ($3 saved) and a few other misc. unadvertised sales.

That said, the Grocery Game isn’t for everyone. The Game is optimized for people who:

• Live near several major grocery chains
• Have flexible shopping days
• Shop at multiple stores
• Clip coupons
• Have room to stockpile 12 weeks of items

That’s not to say you won’t save any money if you don’t fit those criteria, just that you won’t be saving as much. The only real deal breaker is not living near national chains. If you live in the inner city and shop at the corner market, this is not for you.

In addition to the actual list, there’s also a coupon center (in partnership with coupons.com, I believe) where you can print coupons or find links to buy or trade coupons, a message board where you can talk to other Gamers and get help and some sort of weird pop culture/women’s magazine type center called Teri Today they’re trying out (not worth it). The message board was actually quite helpful, but I found the Coupon Center (it’s not worth the effort for me) and Teri Today to be an utter waste of time.

Right now they’re having a $1 for 4 week trial, which I think is well worth the ‘investment’. Just remember to cancel before the trial is up. (And tell them kaligoddess@gmail.com sent you)

* I think this claim comes from the idea that you can save over 60% on individual items.

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