If you have been to one of my coupon workshops, you have heard me say that The Grocery Game is a great shortcut for keeping a Price Book.  You may have heard about the Grocery Game or perhaps you have no idea what I am talking about. Either way, you are going to learn a lot right now.

Many moons ago when I first started using the stockpile/coupon method, I joined The Grocery Game after reading Teri Gault’s book, Shop Smart, Save More. Teri is the founder and CEO of The Grocery Game. The first half of the book is really good and explains her theories on stockpiling and saving money. The second half of the book you can pretty much skip over. She puts a lot of entertaining ideas and recipes in the book which might interest you but I thought it was just filler to make her book thicker. The book is available at the Mobile Public Library and I definitely recommend that you read it BEFORE you sign up to try the website.

How does The Grocery Game work? You sign up, using your credit card information and pay nothing for the first four weeks. From there, you have access to every list available for your area. You can bring up the lists any time during the week, even though they are only updated on Sundays, even if a new sale starts on Wednesday, such as Winn Dixie. The cost after the trial is a minimal $10 for 8 weeks with one list and $5 for each additional list. Teri recommends in her book that you not try to keep up with every store but pick your main store and then maybe another one for comparison shopping.

The Grocery Game operates on the principle that items are placed on sale for “rock bottom” prices within a 12 week cycle. Teri says to “trust the list” because they know when the lowest price will be available.

Within each list, items are marked by color-code to tell you which sales are “wait, if possible,” “stockpile now,” or “free.” Yep. I said, “Free,” and sometimes, you even make money on an item. Beside the item, you see the regular price, the store’s sales price, any coupons that apply, and register rewards/rebates that apply, the estimated final price and the percentage off the original price.

Now, what do I think about the Grocery Game website? Several things:

1. I love that you can try it out for four weeks for free and that you can try all of the lists during that trial for no additional fee.
2. I am not sure you can really tell if you are saving money during that short amount of time since you are stockpiling items you will use in the future. Of course, I did go to every store available in our area, except Walmart, and each time, the cashier made a comment about how much I saved.
3. The idea of using The Grocery Game to track Walmart sales is not something I recommend. The list is very different from any other store since they offer comparison pricing. For my area, she only lists the comparison prices for Winn Dixie against Walmart. I could do that myself with the weekly sales ad, available in the mail each Wednesday or at their website.
4. It really does save you some work but it cannot read my pages and does not know about any coupons I got out of magazines or with free samples. So, I still have to do a little work but not near as much and it still helps to know which items are at “rock bottom.”

If you are thinking about trying The Grocery Game, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. The Grocery Game is all about stockpiling. You will probably be able to save money even if you don’t stockpile but probably not enough to pay for the cost of keeping the membership past the trial. But, still try it and see what you think.
2. Read the book, Shop Smart, Save More, first so you can know what to expect before starting your trial.
3. Also, collect coupons from the newspaper and websites for two or three weeks before signing up.
4. If you decide not to keep your subscription, cancel it BEFORE your trial deadline. You can see this date each time you sign-in and mark it on your calendar. If you miss this date, they will debit your card and you WILL NOT get a refund.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. If you have tried The Grocery Game and have any comments, please share your experience with us!