The wonderful world of price matching.

I saved almost $33 at the grocery store yesterday! Pretty cool. I stocked up on some stuff that was on sale. I saved $19.33 on 10 pounds of chicken, $10 on 10 pounds of hamburger, and $3 on three gallons of milk.

I used to never shop the sales. It would frustrate me to no end to go out of my way just to go to the store having the great sale and they would be out of everything. I don't know if it's that way everywhere but around here if you don't get there right when the store opens on the first day of the sale you aren't going to get anything.

But then I learned a secret. Wal-mart price matches. Maybe that is common knowledge to some, but I didn't know it til about a year ago. Even so, I didn't use this nifty feature for a long time. I didn't want to keep those weekly ads, bring them to the store, and then stand there with the cashier while we haggle over whether or not the store brand of Albertson's cheese is the same as Wal-mart's store brand. All to save ten cents.

Then one day I was behind this woman who was price matching. She didn't have all the ads with her. All she had was a list she had written that said the sale prices. She just told the cashier and he priced matched it with no problem. Hmmm. So I started to watch the ads a little closer. I made my notes of things I normally buy and the prices. But I noticed that most of the time Wal-mart's prices were still lower, or at least very close. Close enough to make it seem silly to even bring it up. So again, I got frustrated and gave up.

So now I compromise. There are certain things that the grocery stores put on sale to try to get you in the door. Like the meat they had on sale this week. So I stock up when they have sales like that. Then there is milk. Usually someone somewhere has milk on sale. And when you have two kids you use a lot of milk. I would say we go through about 10 gallons a month. Costco has it for $3 a gallon, which is the cheapest regular price I can find. If anyone ever has it cheaper than that I get as much as I think we can use before it goes bad.

Well, hopefully I inspired a non-coupon user, non- sale shopper to take the easy way out and price match.