Saturday, February 20, 2010

Money Saving Tips: Big Savings Come In Little Packages

Everyone in my family thought it was funny when I started stocking the cupboard with 600 packages of Kool-Aid. It all started with a great sale at my local grocery store; 20 packages of Kool-Aid for $1. I purchased my 20 packages for the week, along with all my other groceries and went home.

Because I am always looking for ways to cut corners on my grocery bill, I was particularly pleased when I discovered I had spent about 5 cents per package instead of the 26 cents per package I normally spend on Kool-Aid. Lets see, on 20 packages of Kool-Aid I had saved $4.20. This is not a lot of money in itself, until I started doing some math.

Every night our family uses 2 packages of Kool-Aid for dinner. If we drank Kool-Aid 300 out of the 365 days in a year, that would mean I would have purchased 600 packages of Kool-Aid. At 26 cents per package, 600 of them would cost me $156, but if I bought them while they were on sale, they would only cost me $30 or roughly the same amount I normally pay in 2 months on Kool-Aid. I couldn’t believe it, by taking advantage of the sale on something I knew I was going to buy anyway, I now had an additional $126 to spend on anything else I wanted.

To make a long story short, I ended up buying the 600 packages of Kool-Aid on sale over a period of 6 days, saved $126 on my grocery bill, entertained my family and I’m blogging about it today with you. Yes big savings come in little packages, so let me encourage you to watch for sales, do a little organizing and you can save money too.

If you have a story to tell like this or other money saving tips, we’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below at Clays Kitchen.