Wednesday Weekly Shopping: Why aren't I saving more?

I invite you to link up to your best grocery deals below, to inspire others to save more! 

A common frustration new couponers face is, "Why aren't I saving more?"

When you begin couponing, you may actually find you're spending more, not less!  Why is that?  It's because you're beginning to add to your stockpile, yet you need items for this week that aren't in your stockpile yet.  So you're buying the same as you did before, plus you're buying food for future weeks.

One solution is that you should budget separately for your stockpile items at first.  As you begin to have more and more types of food on-hand, you won't need to buy them for that particular week, and your grocery bill will gradually go down.  Then you can add more money to your stockpiling budget.

Since I hadn't done much deal shopping for the previous few weeks, I am in this predicament myself! I'm out of stockpiled items like plain spaghetti and instant oatmeal, so I had to buy them at full ALDI prices (which is still less than the grocery store). But I also wanted to get the good deals.  So I went over budget by $20 this week.  I hope I'll be back under budget next week!

Here's what I got this week:

CVS trip 1: Spent $1.92, saved $12.66

ALDI trip 1: Spent $39.82

Publix: Spent $15.74, saved $43.68

ALDI trip 2: Spent $11.16

CVS trip 2: Spent $9.22, saved $10.48

Walgreens: Spent $22.71, saved $18.67

Overall, this week I spent $100.57 for items which retail for $186.06, or a 46% savings based on the retail value of the products at the stores where they were purchased.  (But don't compare percentages!)

For the year (44 weeks), I've spent $3365.88 for items which retail for $5955.59, and saved $2589.71, or a 43% savings. That's an average of $76.50 spent each week for a family of five (husband, wife, and daughters ages 14, 10, and 6), including lots of fresh produce, dairy items, and kosher meat.

How did your shopping go this week? What bargains did you get? Please leave a link to your blog post about your weekly shopping. The aim is not to brag, but to inspire!  Please link up directly to your post, not to the blog itself. I'd appreciate it if you put a link to Wednesday Weekly Shopping in your post as well. If you don't have a blog, please leave a comment!



For more great shopping deals and trips, please check out the bloggers listed on the left sidebar under Shopping Deals Linkups. There are lots of great ideas on each blog and I'm sure you'll find inspiration for you to save even more!