Ways to Save: Discounted Produce, Meat and Breads

If you are a newbie couponer you might be starting to get the hang of saving your family money by matching sale prices and coupons.  This works great on prepackaged items especially.  But one area that can be hard to save on is fresh produce.  From time to time you can find store or manufactures coupons on brand name produce.  But that is not always the case.  Here is one way to look at it, if you save more on packaged items (cereal, pasta, can goods, dairy...) then the savings can cover your produce, meat and bakery purchases.  But once again, I remind you that saving money comes with making new habits.  One of those habits is looking for discounted produce, meat and bakery items.  I do not leave a store without looking at the "oops we baked too much" stand (perfect for finding french toast bread) or scanning the meat case for "manager special" tags.  Often baked goods, meat and produce get marked down for obvious reasons- they want to sell them quick before they go bad.  Don't let this scare you!  Take that steak (at 40% savings) home and cook it that night or freeze it right away.  Veggies are the same.  Even if you don't think you will use it that day or next, freeze it for later.

On Tuesday during my usual Marc's run, I headed for the discount shelf at the back of the produce department.  They had a ton of stuff this week!  Most times their discounted produce bags are usually marked $1 and will even include mixed items.  I got a head of broccoli and cauliflower=$1, a pineapple=$1 and 2 bags of carrots=$1.  But the piece de resistance= flowers!  I always love to "splurge" and buy myself marked down flowers.  But this was the best buy ever.  I got 3 dozen roses for $3!  And they are beautiful!  I turned those 3 dozen into 6 teacher gifts and even had a few left for myself!

What are your thoughts on shopping for discounted produce, meat and bread?