SAVINGS CATCHER

As some of you know, I do almost all my shopping at the local Walmart store. I do that because they have the electric carts that I can ride around the store, since my bad knees will not stand all that walking. Because the store is 10+ miles away, I don't run there every time I need a few items, but try to stock up on everything I need for at least 2 weeks.

I know that some of you hate Walmart for various reasons, and some of you do not have a nice, clean store like I have, with great employees, so I don't blame you if you prefer to shop elsewhere. I would shop in a few other stores as well, if they had carts to ride on.

In my area, Walmart usually has lower prices on the things I buy than the other grocery stores here. We don't have an Aldi within 60 miles, and I don't feel I can save enough to pay for driving that far, plus the extra time it takes. Walmart will also match prices from other stores, but I don't always get all those ads so that I can check their sales. Since Walmart has started their Savings Catcher program, I signed up in early December and I have already saved almost $17.

The best way to save with this is to read all your local ads to check the things you need that might be on sale. Sometimes I find things at a really good price that I may not have on the list but use regularly, so add those to my list, including their sale prices, so that I can compare the prices in the store when I get there. (bad memory, you know) Then I go ahead and buy the rest on my list.

When I get home I enter the receipt number and date, and the program checks all the store ads to match prices, and usually they find some that I was not aware of. Sometimes I just don't take the time to check ads and still end up with some price matches, but later when I do look at the ads I find some that I wish had seen earlier as I would have stocked up. Oh well. Such is life, right?

Here are two examples of savings I was not aware of before shopping. I bought a gallon of Land O'Lakes milk. I paid $3.75 at WM, and they usually have the cheapest daily prices on milk here. But Fareway had it in their ad that week for $2.88, so I got a 'refund' of 87 cents.

Another time I bought 4 Banquet pot pies @ 80 cents each for a total of $3.20, but Savings Catcher found them priced @ 59 cents for a total of $2.36 in HyVee, for a savings of 84 cents. I had seen that Fareway had Yoplait yogurt on sale for 50 cents and usually WM's price is 60 cents, so I bought the required 10 cartons, but they didn't show up as a savings. Then I looked at my receipt again and found WM had reduced their price to 42 cents each! I didn't even notice that when I was shopping, or I might have bought more since I always try to keep that on hand. So for just a few minutes of your time to enter the receipt number, you can save quite a bit. And if you also have manufacturer's coupons for those items, you save even more.

I don't have a smart phone, but if you do, you can download their Savings Catcher app and then just scan your receipt. I have to go to the website and type in the receipt number, but when I do that I can also check which stores had the cheaper prices.

I am not as good as my friend Rhonda over at http://ifyoudostuff.blogspot.com where she has shared all her savings at CVS. But we do not have CVS stores here so I can't work on that like she does. Rhonda, you do amazing things with that store!