Searching Through All the Ads

Since groceries/food are a significant part of my budget and eating is somewhat necessary, I have always attempted to save money on groceries.

But I find it difficult to make the time to go through all the grocery ads each week.

Some weeks I do better than others, but if I really take the time to thoroughly go through them all it takes hours.

A little research found that in Phoenix (where I live) there are between 1200 and 1700 Grocery Ad items in the flyers each week.

No surprise it's a big number, although that was more than I expected.

Taking the value of my time into account, it seems as though the savings achieved for carefully searching the ads may not be worth it.

The Free Ad-Filter I Found Online

I found a website that filters out the worthless Grocery Ads that are only a small discount or even just regular price (yes, a significant number of Grocery Ads are simply the regular price).

It basically does what I used to try to do myself: sort through all the ads, make note of the ones that were actually a good sale and organize my results by store and by item category (and also by day -- some stores have super sales on only certain days of the week).

The site posts something like 75-150 total sale items (at leat for the Phoenix Lists that I follow) each week for I think 8 Grocery Stores.

So like 10-20 items per store but it varies widely depending on the quality of sales at each store from week to week.

And each item is tagged by quality of the sale: + OK Sale; ++ GOOD Sale; +++ GREAT Sale (something like that).

Also, the best sales are put at the top of the list so that if I'm in a hurry that week I can at least make sure I can easily get the "GREAT" deals.

My Experiment

I started using the website earlier in the year, putting the link on my phone like the site suggested (to also use it right at the store), and the first thing I noticed was the huge time savings.

I loved that it was simply an internet link and not another intrusive phone app to load.

It also seemed like I was saving more money for sure but I couldn't tell just how much.

So in late May I decided to keep track of everything for the entire month of June.

My rule was: don't do anything different than I would normally do -- I wanted to get a good feel for just how much money I was actually saving, how much time it took, how many miles I traveled.

The Results

Family of 4: 1 adult, 3 teenagers.

Near-suburb of Phoenix, with many grocery stores in vicinity.

There were 11 trips to the store(s):

June 4: Frys

June 5: Safeway

June 7: trip 1 - Safeway

June 7: trip 2 - Albertsons

June 9: Safeway

June 13: Sprouts/ElRanch/FoodCity(single trip)

June 14: RanchMkt/FoodCity/Frys (single trip)

June 16: Safeway/Albertsons/Frys (single trip)

June 29: Sam's Club

June 30: trip 1 - RanchMarket/FoodCity

June 30: trip 2 - Safeway/Frys



Money Saved

Spent $544.44 for the month.

(regular price $1096.11)

Saved $551.67, or 50.3%

Caveat: without a website or any paper ads at all you will save a little just randomly; maybe a few percent if you are the careless or sporadic type, possbly 10-15% or so if you are careful checking sales while in the store.



Time Expended

Time traveling to/from stores, including time shopping for groceries and checking out, etc. (that is to say, everything involved) was 7.9 hours.

In the photo milage is shown for each week (the first four numbers) and Sam's Club is separate.

As for time spent going through ads (exclusively using the Conservify website) was about 15-20 minutes/week.

So let's call that ~1.5 hours for the month.

I would guess I used to spend an average of 1-2 hours per week (approx. 4-9 hours/month) before when going through the grocery store flyers myself, although that would probably need to be over two hours per week to generate the quality list available on the website.

Anyway, looks like the Conservify webiste saves me about 4-7 hours per month on searching ads.

There was another time saver too, by storing the Conservify website link on my phone.

I found it useful to make unplanned stops to a grocery store on my way to/from some other activities.

Having the link on my phone allowed me to check for sales at upcoming Grocery Stores while in transit to/from other places, preventing another trip to the store later, saving time and miles.

I will guess this saves me about 2 hours and 5 miles per month.

Miles Driven

A total of 39 miles were driven.

This doesn't having much to do with the website.

But indeed, I found it beneficial in 2 ways:

[1] It seems like I am able to plan multi-store trips better because the website has the sales neatly organized both by store and by category.

[2] Having the link stored on my phone allowed me to save milage (and time) by being able to quickly check for sales at stores (and make a quick stop) while driving to/from some other activities.

A Few Months Later

I continue to do a spot-check whenever I leaved a grocery store.

Some stores I have to estimate, but others like Frys and Safeway put the actual percentage savings on the receipt.

Abertsons and Bashas at least put the dollar savings, so pretty easy to quickly estimate percentage.

Overall there is a wide range, like 30%-65% for any given receipt.

But the majority are in the 40-something percent savings.

So seems like it is consistently saving me money.



Yay!