Extreme frugality: Deal eyes.

 

The first Tuesday of every month is a standing date for DF and me: “Senior Day,” when folks over the age of 55 get 10 percent off all Kroger brands. In keeping with our extreme frugality ethos, we cruised the entire store to look for special deals.

And boy, did we find one. The price was so startling that we did double and then triple takes: 1½-pound boxes of Kroger breakfast sausage links for 49 cents.

What made the deal extra-surprising is that the 1½-pound boxes of Kroger breakfast sausages right next to them cost $4.99 each. Examining the extreme-frugality version, we saw the reason for the startling differences in price: The cheaper sausage needed to be used or frozen that very day.

Fortunately, we now have two freezers: My niece replaced her 5-cubic-foot model with a much bigger deep-freeze, and gave us the old one. DF and one of his sons had picked it up just two days before.

So we bought a lot of sausage, including five boxes for my niece and her kids. This being Senior Day and the sausage being a Kroger product, we even got an additional discount. (Sort of. More on this below.)

The moral of the story: If you want to practice extreme frugality, you need to develop what I call “deal eyes.”

That means always being on the lookout for great prices. Sometimes that’s an orange tag, a red sticker or a closeout sign. But other deal-eye tactics exist, too.

Looking for bargains

Wanna get your deal-eye on? Adopt these practices.

Keep a list. That’s old advice and everyone mentions it – because it works. I have my own spin on the practice however: Start your list by writing down any money goals you have, such as “pay off credit card debt” or “start an emergency fund.” Write it in black marker, and in capital letters, before you write down the things you need to buy that day. As I noted in “Goal-oriented groceries”: 

Having your goal right in front of you may help you put things in perspective … Money spent on Double-Stuf Oreos is a few more dollars that don’t help snowflake a debt. Frozen mac ’n’ cheese is much costlier than making our own. Those prefab bottles of “all natural” iced tea work out to as much as $13 a gallon.

All this works out to money that doesn’t go toward your goals, whether that’s summer camp for your kids or a Roth IRA for you.

Read store ads. You may not get the newspaper any longer, but stores will let you know what’s on sale. Sign up for e-mail or text alerts, or check the store’s website before you shop. And if you’re shopping online, use a site like Savings.com to find coupon codes.

Read the signage. The 49-cent sausage deal wasn’t a small red or orange tag, but rather a typical yellow sign the size of a sheet of typing paper. It was what was on the sign that got our attention. DF and I are reading people, quickly scanning everything we see. If you’re the kind of person who reads only the store circular in your hand (or on your phone), develop the habit of checking out your surroundings as well.

In fact, train yourself to…

Check all the store aisles. The open freezer in which the sausages were stored was set a dozen feet away from the main meat section. Fortunately, DF suggested we take one more peek in that area to see if there were any other specials.

Possible downside: This could tempt you to buy stuff you don’t really need, especially if you’re hungry. Sometimes willpower doesn’t work, despite our best efforts. I think of these as “Oscar Wilde moments,” in honor of something the famous author once said: “I can resist anything except temptation.”

My advice: Always have a hard candy or two in your purse, backpack or coat pocket. Let it melt in your mouth while you shop, and all the goodies will seem less tempting thanks to the steady drip of sugar into your bloodstream. The extra walk and its attendant perils of temptation will all be worth it if you find any discounts.

Learn to love clearance. Once I paid 84 cents for a 30-ounce can of coffee found in the clearance section of Office Max. A drugstore clearance bin yielded numerous boxes of instant vanilla pudding for nine cents apiece. I’ve also found things such as canned pumpkin (25 cents), women’s knitted gloves (two pairs for 33 cents), canned tomatoes (35 cents) and adhesive bandages (50 cents – and since I had 50-cent coupons, they were free).

Use shopping apps. Apps like Ibotta, Shopkick and Fetch Rewards have gotten me things like Malt-O-Meal cereal, sugar-free gum, Oikos yogurt, women’s razors, Talenti gelato and sliced turkey breast for free. Some I keep, some I donate to the food bank. I also cash in gift cards from these shopping apps to “buy” groceries and to get things we need for our garden ($213 and counting, this year).

The trick is to combine a sale price and/or store special deal with app rebates. If that sounds like a lot of work, it doesn’t have to be: the CouponMom.com website lists these sale/rebate combos, store by store and state by state. (Learn more in “Rewards programs FTW!”)

The deals just keep on comin’

Technically, we should have gotten an additional five cents off each box of sausage. When the store clerk ran the Senior Day bar code, however, the machine refused to apply it. Twice.

I suggested that maybe there was some kind of rule about applying the discount to remaindered items. The clerk shook her head. “I’m pretty sure you guys should get the discount,” and went on to say that the checkout software had been malfunctioning off and on all morning.

She offered to change the price of the Kroger brand creamer to $1, to make up for what we weren’t getting. We thanked her, and she made it happen.

Bonus extreme frugality points: Because I’d downloaded a coupon to my store card, the computer took off another 60 cents. Total cost: 40 cents. Ka-CHING!

According to my rough calculations, that meant the sausage cost us 42 cents per box, or 28 cents a pound. I don’t think that breakfast sausage has ever been available at that price in my lifetime.

Extreme frugality in other areas

Deal eyes are not limited to great grocery deals. Furniture, clothing, gifts and other needs (and wants) can be obtained this way. A few tactics, in addition to the ones above:

Learn special thrift-store pricing. For example, one secondhand shop in Phoenix takes 50 percent off every Monday. Guess which day I like to go there when visiting my daughter? A thrift store in Anchorage has half-off deals associated with holidays and special occasions (such as back to school).

Use your connections. Got an AARP membership, or a college ID? Are you a member of the military? These and other associations might get you a price break. Can’t hurt to ask – and if you’re too shy to ask, check the company website to see if such deals exist.

Join a Buy Nothing group. Where deals are concerned, you can’t beat free. And if you don’t see the deal you need at the moment, you can put up an “ask.” That’s how I replaced my blender when the jar developed a crack, and our waffle iron when it caught fire* one morning.

The bottom line

Extreme frugality comes easily to DF and me. Not everyone is comfortable living this way, and not everyone has to – it’s a very personal choice.

I think we’re in a recession, although it’s not officially been called that. (In fact, I think some people never truly made it out of the last one.) In this inflationary era, it’s crucial to keep an eye on the bottom line. Developing a set of deal eyes can help you do that.

Readers: Got any deal-eyes tactics to share?

*This was a really old waffle iron. It had a cloth cord.

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25 thoughts on “Extreme frugality: Deal eyes.”

  1. Oh MY!!!! Wow, what a deal! I can still find other bargains, but it seems like meat clearances are in short supply around here. Safeway has a measly 30% off, but it’s so rare that I find this on sale meat — just the original-priced stuff.

    I’ve been doing better on milk and cheese — provided I wait every other week. If I do that, milk can be as low as $1.77 or $2. (Otherwise, it’s $3.77.)

    My better deals have been on Amazon Warehouse. I got canned chicken – enough for a meal – for about 80 cents a can. Cheaper than tuna. But there are generally only one or two at this price, and you have to nab them quickly.

    Also — watch the items carefully. Safeway does not always input the sale prices! (I hope this is not on purpose, but it’s happened a lot.) Now if this happens with King Soopers, you get the item free. Nope nope nope on Safeway. Safeway is also offering sale prices on produce and fruit for only 3 pounds worth — any more, and you pay the full price for ALL of the bag. (King Soopers red-bags discount produce, and sells it all for 99 cents each.)

    I’m assuming you’re signed up for rewards — those help, too. Not as often as they used to — but they still help.
    Oh yes, our local thrift shop in Castle Rock, CO — which is a good one, since we live in a high-income area — has a 15% discount for seniors on Tuesday — and racks of free bread, including luxury brands. Take all you want. Need I say that I try to schedule my trips into town on Tuesdays…

    Reply
    • Free bread would get me through the doors. If you don’t already do this, consider cutting some of it into cubes and letting it sit out until it gets good and stale. Now it’s ready for stuffing, bread pudding or croutons. We try always to have a bag of clearance bread cubes around.

      A can of chicken for 80 cents sounds like an excellent price to me. Shelf-stable protein is a great thing to have around in case of power failures, or the zombie apocalypse. Regarding the price of cheese: A two-pound brick of Tillamook was $9.98 at Walmart, where I scanned it for Shopkick points. Within 10 days, the price had jumped (leaped, really) to $14.98. These are scary times to be trying to feed a family, or even oneself.

      Thanks for being such a consistent reader and commenter.

      Reply
  2. Our local grocery store seems to be the remainder store for the chain (it is a small chain on Vancouver Island, maybe 8 or 9 stores?). Anyway, although some of the REALLY good deals are rarer, I still find it worthwhile to do a wander, and am finding that it takes a bit of looking, as you say, Donna. I picked up 1.2 KG of sliced turkey breast for $6.99 (which is a hella deal, here. I figure if I can get protein for under $1 per 100 grams it is worth it, and I see that less and less). I ended up foodsaver freezing almost all of the slices as the best by date is August 8. Then I ate some of the slices rolled up to be fancy, with a side of discounted grapes. And THEN I went back to the store and bought more, because they were really good. I now need to freeze more, and eat the rest before Sunday.
    This store has had things like granola bars for $1 – and the bars had a $1 coupon on the back. needless to say, I bought 4, then cut the coupons on and got 4 more (for free!), and did that 2 more times. as the kids actually liked that particular bar. Was a bit less successful with another discounted bar, so I have become a bit more discerning. In canada we don’t get so many good coupons, so I use them when I can.
    @Donna, you will be pleased to hear that I got your Volume 2 book out of my local Vancouver Island library. Perhaps we aren’t so backwoods as all that!

    Reply
    • Let’s hear it for dollar-and-under protein! I can tell you understand why 28-cent-per-pound sausage made DF and me so happy.

      I’m glad the book is in the library. Thank you for letting me know.

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  3. I love the term “deal eyes”!!! I have them!!
    Always on the lookout whenever I go to any store for the “clearance rack/shelves” – at my regular stores I know where it is!
    At Aldi, Target and WalMart – I always scan the meat aisle for the bright red or yellow “$$ off this package” stickers (which they put on items that are approaching their “sell or freeze by” date — if its a good deal, I get it, even if I am not in there to buy meat! I know what days are half off at my local thrifts, and Saturday is “bread/bagels/entennmans baked goods” day at my local dollar store!!
    At our Publix grocery stores – if an item rings up wrong you get it free, so always pays to keep you deal eyes open while they are scanning at the checkout also!

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  4. In our neighborhood, we have a chain store (a regular type store, not a big box store) that is part organic/health food/herbal supplement store, part general store and part regular drug store/pharmacy. I put on my “deal eyes” a lot in that place. One thing I’ve noticed is that the trendy health/herbal section consistently has super high prices, but you can often get a very similar product for much less money elsewhere in the store. I am amazed that prices can vary so widely in the very same store building! Case in point: I bought some iron supplement pills for under $3 the other day — they came from the drug store aisle. That was a fraction of the price of other products, including two that were next to the brand I bought, as well as the stuff in the herbal/health section. Some of those pills can be priced $10, $20 or even more. But since they’re well-known “herbal” brands, people buy them. Without checking prices in the store’s other departments. Another example: a not-so-famous brand of bottled water is only $1.89 per case (24 bottles), while the more well-known brands cost upwards of three or four bucks for the same amount. As far as I’m concerned, water is water. I think a lot of people are bedazzled by such words as “natural” or “organic” when the other stuff is probably just as good.

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    • Definitely! Different aisles have different ways of selling. For example, when I visited my daughter in Phoenix I wanted to buy curry powder but it was sold in large amounts and at a high price in the spice aisle. But when I checked out the “international foods” aisle, I found small amounts of curry in cellophane packets for well under a dollar.

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  5. What a deal!!! Now I am waiting for you and DF to come up with a song about “Deal Eyes” to the tune and lyrics of “Hungry Eyes” by Carmen I know it can happen !! 🙂

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  6. Buying food like the 49 cent sausage isn’t just good for your finances, assuming you, or someone else, like your niece or her kids, actually eats the sausage.

    Food waste is a major contributor to climate change, and while that sausage was likely perfectly fine to eat for at least a few more days, or much longer if frozen right away, had you, or someone else, not bought them that day, Kroger probably would’ve had to throw them away, contributing to climate change that increasingly is having negative impacts on all of us.

    Reply
    • I agree the sausage would probably have been good for longer. But when it comes to food safety, best to err on the side of caution. In addition, there’s the litigation issue: If food banks accept even canned food past its best-by date, they might be sued by some numbskull who ate the two-weeks-past-best-by-date soup and claimed he got food poisoning from it.

      Also with you on food waste. It’s appalling how much perfectly good food gets thrown away each year.

      The sausage will definitely be eaten. We don’t buy things we don’t like to eat, and niece specifically requested five boxes. She has a teenager and a young adult in the household, and food doesn’t last long there.

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  7. Since you are of my generation, may I suggest singing “Deal Eyes” to the tune of “Angry Eyes” (Loggins & Messina) or “Betty Davis Eyes” (Kim Carnes). I love the phrase that you’ve coined! I have ’em-have gotten multiple free frozen pizzas from the Acme grocery chain app here in NJ. Historically, a freebie was offered once a week just for having the app. Now, the freebies are not coming as often, but I still peek weekly just in case. They also have Senior Day (5% off) every Tuesday. I have to confess that I had an Oscar Wilde moment today, though. Whole Foods happened to have a couple of good sales (especially when their additional 10 per cent off for having Amazon Prime was factored in). I happened to spy my beloved Ranier cherries and bought them…at $8.99 for the one pound package. They are scarce as hen’s teeth this year. I am a believer in your adage about saving where you can so you can splurge on what you really want once in a while.

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  8. I often go after work, so I try not to wander too much even though I make sure to have a snack before I go. I always check the clearance sections though, produce, meat, bakery, and general. Lately Krogers had a lot of closeouts and I grab the ones we’ll use. Last week I got a box of Kroger store brand cereal for 0.20.

    Reply
      • When we lived in Barrow, there were few sales at the one grocery store there was at the time. However, one time they had a case of shredded wheat for 25 cents a box. We bought the entire case and ate it every single day. After that case, we did not buy shredded wheat for several years.

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  9. I just bought a bag of green peppers (total of 12) for a buck. They were perfectly fine. I dehydrated/froze them for winter soups and spaghetti).
    I was in a box lumber company and strolled through the food section. There I found spaghetti sauce, chicken chow mein, and cans of stew for $1 each. Instead of buying what I came for (marked down fall decor), I put the money into the food. I needed to make a donation to the local food pantry anyway.

    By the way, this is off subject, but my church came up with the idea of a rummage non sale. People donated items (not junk, but useful stuff), and people came in to take what they wanted for free. The youth helped carry and deliver larger items. Since our town is one of the poorest ones in the state, this is a boon to people who have nothing or are just starting out.
    There were furniture sets, dining sets, kitchen stuff, linens, clothing, and miscellaneous. Church men fetched and carried what the owners couldn’t. The church ladies had set it up like a store where if you were looking for something, you knew where to go. Lots of work, lots of prayers, lots of smiles and laughs. And lots of really good stuff!

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  10. I really miss Kroger. The clearance deals were amazing!

    Lately we are coping with the jumps in the price of food by shopping mostly at Aldi, but still go to Food Lion for three items Aldi does not sell. I scored a 24 count pack of Mission corn tortillas off the Food Lion clearance rack for 57 cents. It will be a sad moment when they are all eaten up because those are really tasty.

    Reply
    • DF gets our tortillas at the bakery outlet, which he calls the “used bread” store. The other night we had tacos made with corn tortillas that were 30 for $1, organic ground beef that had been marked down to 99 cents a few months back (I love our freezer), taco seasoning that we make ourselves (including a couple of ingredients I got for free from the Buy Nothing group), lettuce from the garden, and on-sale sour cream mixed with salsa that I got incredibly cheaply thanks to a sale plus Ibotta rebate. Oh, and a side of sliced cucumbers to cool the burn. Very good, pretty healthy and very, very affordable.

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  11. I have found my chain pharmacy to be a good source for deals…if I keep my eyes open. I have found 72 count boxes of name brand tea for .50 each. One time there were four boxes and that batch kept me in homemade iced tea all summer. Recently I found two containers of an Aveeno body wash DH must use for psoriasis marked down 75%. What a (cheap) thrill! DH knows I love chocolate and loved to buy me boxes of it for birthdays, anniversaries, Valentines Day. Awhile back I told him to wait until the day after when they get marked down 50-75% off at this pharmacy.
    The other place to get tremendous deals is at store closings. I shopped at a local department store’s last few business days and got diced tomatoes for .29 per 14 oz. can, cans of pinto beans for .29 for 14 0z. cans, jello and pudding boxes for .19 each, hair dye for $2 a box, giant KitKat bars for .49 each which I used as prizes for our family games on Christmas Eve. Lots of deals.

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    • Wow. It’s fun having a deep pantry, but even more fun when you don’t pay retail. (Although I’m sorry that the store went out of business, even though it happens all the time. Long ago, when about to move back to Philly with the baby, I bought a few knives, forks and spoons from a department store that was closing its doors. Hadn’t thought of that in decades.)

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  12. A huge yes to deal eyes! Mine are always on!

    When we are in Walmart, I am teaching my kids to scan the aisles for clearance since they put their clearance prices on the same yellow stickers as their regular prices. So, they don’t stand out that much; you have to really be looking. And we ALWAYS check out the designated clearance sections of any store we’re in.

    I have started scouting for free or low cost items to create snack boxes for each of my kids for Christmas and I’m also working on a beauty box Christmas gift for my preteen daughter since she’s getting interested in all that stuff. I found these really nice Cetaphil facial cleansing wipes at Walmart that are normally $6.47. They were on clearance for $4.88 (only caught because my “deal eyes” were scanning the bottom shelf) and then I had a coupon on top of it as well as an Ibotta rebate. I ended up getting it for about $0.20 out of pocket. It will make a great addition to her Christmas beauty box!

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  13. I have to be careful of when activate my “deal eyes” as my husband is a picky eater; hard to please at meal times. I usually go after meat deals only, and save money by starting a pickup order at Walmart in the beginning of the week adding to it as we run out of items. I keep a well stocked pantry and I use Ibotta for my Walmart online purchases, and shop the mark down meats at local market. I did not know about Kroger’s senior day! I’ll have to pop in first Tuesdays!

    Reply
    • It might be a day other than the first Tuesday, so please check to be sure. For example, it’s the first Wednesday of every month in Phoenix.

      The best fun: Finding Kroger items in the dented-can bin for 59 cents or whatever — and still getting the 10 percent off.

      Reply

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