Preparing for Battle

Does that sound like a strange title for a blog about shopping? Maybe, but I want to set a tone here. You are at war. With whom? Retailers. I worked in retail for over a decade, and I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, they want as much money as they can get from you. Does this mean they are evil? Well, I won't make that decision for you. Let's just say, they don't always have your best interests at heart.

So, how do you battle the Retail Beast? As promised, I will pass on some advice my momma gave me. I will also let you in on some marketing secrets I learned in my years of service to the RB. Mainly, I am going to give tips on grocery shopping this week. I'll deal with other retailers later, but if you are like me, a good chunk of your money after bills are paid goes to groceries, so we'll tackle that first.

When preparing for battle, you must arm yourself. For this battle you will need: weekly grocery store ads, a pad of paper, a pen, your coupon organizer (we'll deal with coupons another time) and some secret information. Oh, and a plan.

Your plan will be specific for your family's battle, but there are some key ingredients: a budgeted amount for groceries, an idea of how many meals you will prepare at home and access to recipes of or knowledge of how to cook healthy meals your family will actually eat. As I said in my post about finding your Quality Quotient, you may be a list maker who likes to have things written down and organized. If so, jot down some guidelines to come up with the plan for your family. If you don't write it down, know it inside and out. If you don't know your plan, your enemy will wound you soon after you enter the battlefield.

Now that you have a plan to guide you, take your first grocery store ad and look at the front page. Most of the good deals will be there. Here's your first secret tip: Most of these items are Loss Leaders. A loss leader is an item on which a store is willing to barely break even or even lose money to get you into the store. It's bait.

You can use loss leaders to your advantage by planning your week's meal menu around them. Also, there are a few grocery stores in which the only things I buy are loss leaders because their prices on everything else are outrageous. It will cost me less in gas to drive across town than it would to buy everything at that expensive store. Sometimes time wins out, but with these expensive stores, I do battle best when I run in, strike quickly at my targets and retreat to another battle front. Some stores price match, which can save you time and money, but that's a whole other subject for another day.

As you are looking at your Loss Leaders, decide what meals you could make with them. Here's what my mom used to say about those times when she was a young mom with babies and a husband to feed. "When tuna was on sale, that's what we had that week." Now, I'm not telling you to take it to that extreme unless you are at a place where you have to for a while, but if chicken is on sale, find several recipes you can make with chicken. Maybe hamburger or pork steaks or pot roast is on sale that week too. Plan out the week alternating the different flavors and serving different sides and vegetables, and no one will be the wiser.

I don't want to bog you down with too much counter-intelligence at one time, so I'll leave it here for now. Remember, know your enemy. Learn his weak spots. We'll go through battle together, and we will defeat the RB!