Grocery Deals this Week

Skimming through the weekly ads is always helpful to save money on groceries, and since I have to do it for my family anyway, I thought I would share a few “don’t miss” deals I’m finding at Wichita grocery stores this week.

Grocery deals will help you save a lot of money on meals if you buy judiciously and try to get the most nutritious foods for your dollar. If you have some freezer space, you’ll be able to preserve many items and keep on saving in the months to come. At the bottom of this article I’ve shared some ways my family and I save money – there’s nothing extreme (I don’t have time for that) and I tried to share tips that would apply for most families. 

One of the ways we keep the grocery budget low is by shopping the sales and stocking up (not apocalypse-level, just buying a few extras), when food is cheap. We store in the freezer or pantry if we aren’t going to use something right away. Rule of thumb: use common sense and if you’re not sure whether you’ll use it, do not stock up. 

Best Grocery Deals this Week

Note: This is not a coupon matchup! We don’t have time for that, nor can we write every single sale in every single weekly circular. The items on our list are ones that caught our eye as being a good deal, and we would likely pick up if we happen to be out shopping this week!

Sam’s Club Grocery Deals

Sam’s doesn’t always put out a circular but they do almost always have great deals! Here are a couple we know about this week: 

• Member’s Mark Assorted Pork Chops $1.08/lb
• Avocados (5 ct.) $4.14 aka .83 ea

We also check the prices at Sam’s for things like soda, water, and other beverages. Produce at Sam’s Club is sometimes priced really well – for example, we’ve been buying 3-pound bags of oranges there for around a dollar (ish) a pound, and the oranges are really good. Their bagged salad is a steal at $1.68 for 2 pounds. 

If you don’t have a Sam’s Club membership, you can get one for a good price right now through Groupon. That deal is for new members only. We love our Sam’s Club membership and take full advantage of it. 

Dillon’s Deals

Notes

1. These are just what I have noticed so far. If you need a coupon, I’ll mention that too and link to it if possible. The goal is to not have to bother with coupons, but sometimes they will be too good to pass up! 
2. FUEL POINTS: You must load the digital coupon onto your shopper’s card for any extra fuel points (like 2x or 4x deals) to be applied. 
3. All prices are with Dillons card.
4. wyb = When you buy a certain number of participating items; you can mix and match! (In other words, you don’t have to buy 5 of the same item.)

Dillons deals 8/5 to 8/11

• Pepsi or 7UP, 24-pk, $5.99 ea wyb 2
• Kroger Cheese, 32 oz $5.99
• Kroger Peanut Butter, 10/$10
• Kroger Bread 10/$10
• Entenmann’s Little Bites or Mini Snack Cakes, Buy one get one FREE
• Goldfish (6.6 oz) .99 ea wyb 5 (mix and match)
• General Mills Cereal, $1.49 wyb 5 (mix and match)
• Turkey Hill Ice Cream, $2,49 ea wyb 5 (mix and match)
• California Yellow or White Peaches or Nectarines, .98/lb
• Red or Black Plums, .98/lb
• Kroger Deluxe Ice Cream 2/$5
• Nathan’s Hot Dogs 2/$7
• Kroger Sour Cream or Cottage Cheese, 24 oz., $1.99
• Fresh Heritage Farm Chicken Leg Quarters, .49/lb
• Medium Haas Avocados .79 ea
• Oscar Meyer Lunchables 10/$10

Digital coupons (use up to 5x in one transaction)

You do need to load these coupons onto your Dillon’s shopper’s card in order to get these deals. 

• Find the best coupons here
• Save $0.80 on Kroger String Cheese
• Save $3.00 on Tide Free Liquid Laundry Detergent

Aldi’s Deals this Week

August 5- August 11, 2020:

• Large Seedless Watermelon, $3.89
• Baby Bella Mushrooms, 8 oz., $1.29
• Honey Wheat Bread, $0.79
• Lunch Mate Lunch Meat $1.99/ea
• Happy Farms Deli-Sliced Cheese, $1.49

Leeker’s Grocery Store Deals

Leekers has an app with digital coupons. If you shop at any store regularly, it’s probably a good idea to get the app. 

• Whole Boston Butt Pork Roast, .99/lb (limit 1, with additional purchase)
• Large Cantaloupes, $2.49 ea
• Kellogg’s Cereal 2/$5, BUY 2/$5 Get one gallon of milk FREE
• Hunt’s Ketchup, 20 oz. .99 ea
• Jimmy Dean Sausage, $2.99

Sprouts Farmers Market

Sprouts deals 8/5 through 8/11:

• Olathe Sweet Corn, 8 for $2
• Navel Oranges, .98/lb
• Golden Ripe Pineapples, 2/$4
• All natural boneless, skinless chicken tenders or thighs, $1.99/lb
• Maradol Papayas, .88/lb
• Red, White, or Sweet Onions, .77/lb

How We Save Money on Groceries -Our Methods

The key to saving money on groceries, – at least for me – is simplicity. Whenever I have a complicated plan it always seems to blow up in my face. 

This means making really basic meal plans (nothing complicated!), keeping a stocked pantry, having goal prices for staples, perusing the weekly ads, and maybe taking advantage of a few coupons or app deals. And just so you know – occasionally I flunk (bad) frugal dining 101. Everyone probably does at some time or another. We just deal with it, and the consequences aren’t as bad as if you weren’t even trying to get your meals in under budget. So give yourself a pass and start again tomorrow. 

(By the way, it’s smart to plan a restaurant or takeout night in your meal plan! Because you though about it ahead of time, you can probably save money by using a coupon, taking advantage of a deal, or going during the early-bird special time.)

Coupons

We don’t use extreme coupon methods here because I’ve never been able to make it work on a consistent basis. However, I am not above using a coupon if it’s for an item I am going to buy anyway, especially with the ease of digital coupons.

What I don’t try to do anymore is clip and match and stack and go for rebates and register rewards. It always got to be too much for me! Your mileage may vary; I know people save a lot of money that way and they love it. I usually get frustrated and spend more time than I have trying to figure it all out. 

Store Apps

If you shop frequently at one particular store, it’s probably going to be worth downloading that store’s app so you can use all of its features. I find this to be particularly true of the Dillons app, where I can make my shopping list, find coupons for items on my list, view the ad, and even let the app help me navigate around the store. 

Other apps you may consider include shopping apps that give you cash back for items you’ve already purchased. Most apps like this have you scan your receipt and choose applicable offers. When you’ve reached a certain dollar amount – say, $20 or $50 – the company will either mail you a check or you get a digital gift card of some kind. The particulars vary depending on which app you’re using. 

The most popular of these shopping apps right now seems to be Ibotta. Dillons recently added cash-back offers on its app too. 

You may be able to stack coupons with cashback offers to increase your savings. It’s a great bonus when it works, but this is also where couponing starts to get complicated and crazy-making. 

Weekly Ads

It’s worth spending a few minutes every skimming the grocery ads for good sale prices. You’ll find that certain items are always on sale around the same time every year. As an example, I get the best deals on baking items in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, so that’s when I always restock my supplies. You’ll also begin to see sale cycles, so you can start to make educated guesses about how much you’ll need to buy so it will last you until the next sale. 

Shop Multiple Stores

We have a few favorite stores that we shop regularly. All are within a few miles of our home, so there isn’t a lot of extra time or gas involved in buying things from different stores. (If I lived in a rural area with one grocery store, I would definitely adjust my strategy.) Shopping at different stores helps us save on particular items; for example, at the time of this writing, milk is much less expensive at Dillons than it is at Sam’s, but Sam’s is where I buy almost all my paper goods, trash bags, tortillas, frozen fruit, and cheese (among other things). Other things I’ll try to get at Aldi, which we visit a little less frequently. 

If you can develop a routine for shopping multiple stores, you can shave some dollars off your grocery budget each week. 

“Buy Prices”

In addition to all the methods above, one of the easiest and most fool-proof ways I save money at the grocery store is to have what I think of as my “buy price” for different categories. The reason this is so easy is that when I find myself at the store without a list or a plan (it happens), I’ll know whether the prices I’m seeing are good or way too expensive. 

How this works is you set yourself a goal price for, say, meats. My goal price for boneless is $2 per pound. Some people think I’m crazy to have a goal price that low, and I’ll admit it’s getting harder and harder to find. But it still helps me make some decisions when I’m standing there in the grocery store. My goal price for bone-in meat, by the way, is 99 cents per pound. 

If you’re strictly into organic, or free-range, or grass-fed, then obviously your “buy price” is going to have to be a lot more than mine, and that’s okay! You just decide what it is, and then when you go shopping or look at the weekly sales, you’ll know a good price when you see one. 

Stock Up

Stocking up is another technique for saving money when you shop, and it’s also something I personally do not do in the extreme. My family has an extra freezer in the garage, but most of the time it isn’t full. (I should probably do a better job of stocking up, to tell you the truth.) But I do have several pounds of butter in there that we paid $1.99 for when it was on sale with a digital coupon. We also have a favorite brand of toilet paper and we buy it in a gigantic pack from the warehouse club. What we don’t try to do is have our own warehouse of supplies. I don’t have the space for that, and I’m also just not interested in that level of preparation. When we stock up, it’s usually to carry us through to the next sale cycle, so we’re only talking about several weeks worth, and just enough for our family – not for the whole neighborhood for twenty lifetimes.

Meal Plan

I’m awful at meal planning so please don’t picture a cute internet printable with breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks all pre-prepped and outlined for each day. I start (and sometimes end) with a few basic meals that I know our family will eat and that I will actually cook. No pan-seared halibut with focaccia-crusted roasted artichoke hearts and fresh mango salsa. 🙂 Or whatever. I’m talking spaghetti, grilled cheese, nachos, fish sticks, lol! It’s not that simple all of the time, but I want to emphasize that a meal plan is something that is supposed to work, and it won’t work if you’re challenging yourself with difficult recipes and long grocery lists of ingredients at 5 p.m. every single weekday evening when the kids are needy, you and your spouse are tired, and everyone’s hangry. 

You don’t have to Instagram every night’s meal. No one will know if you fall back on prepared spaghetti sauce or breakfast for dinner for the third time this week. And yes, they are doing it too. 

Related: How to Save at Sprouts Farmers Market