Beyond Couponing – Know Your Price Per Ounce!
If you’re new to my blog you can check out these earlier posts, which include an Introduction to Couponing, how to get Organized, knowing your Saving Strategy and going beyond couponing by using Rebates and techniques like Stockpiling to save the most money!
A few people have asked me why I bother with coupons, “Isn’t the ‘store brand’ cheaper anyway?” Well, yes, very often the store brand IS cheaper, but mostly on just a typical day-to-day basis. Most of the time I buy the premium brand for less than the store brand because I use coupons and only buy things when they’re on sale (except for essentials like milk, eggs, produce, etc., and even those things you can often get coupons for!).
To give you a good example of how to figure out whether or not you’re getting the best deal you have to know the price per ounce (or pound or unit) of what you’re buying. This week my favorite grocery store, ShopRite, has the 8 oz. packages of Sargento Shredded Cheese on sale for $1.99, with an extra .30 cents off when you use their store loyalty PricePlus Card, making the final price $1.69. This comes out to $3.98 a pound (ShopRite has shelf tags with cost per unit/pound clearly indicated). Even if your store doesn’t have shelf tags and you’re thinking “There’s no way I’m going to pull out a calculator in the middle of the store to figure it out,” think about this…figuring it out can really help you trim down your grocery bill…and a lot of cell phones even have a calculator setting. The formula is simple:
- calculate the dollar amount of the product divided by the number of ounces (or units, pounds) in the package.
In my example the Sargento cheese costs $3.98 a pound on sale. When I checked the 8 oz. ShopRite Brand of Shredded Cheddar Cheese, it, too, was on sale for $3.29 with an extra .30 cents off with the use of the PricePlus card making the final cost $2.99, which comes out to $4.39 a pound.
Comparing the two I would go for the Sargento anyway because the price per pound, on sale, is cheaper than the ShopRite brand, but I ALSO had a coupon for $1/2 packages. I bought 2 packages for a TOTAL of $2.38. That beats the ShopRite brand by a mile!
So stick a calculator, pen and piece of paper in your coupon organizer and you’re ready to figure out price per ounce if you ever question what the better deal is!
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