Guest Post: Stockpiling

This guest post is written by my bloggy friend Karen. Karen is a stay at home mom to 2 girls and blogs in her spare time at Frugal Rhode Island Mama about about using coupons along with sales, store incentives and rebates to save on everyday products.

One way to save money on things you use every day is to stockpile. If you stockpile then you'll almost never had to pay full price. Do you know how much money you'll save each year? A lot!

In order to stockpile you'll need coupons and a really good sale! If you combine the two (along with any store incentives and/or rebates) you will get items at Rock Bottom prices and you can begin building your stockpile. A Rock Bottom price is when you get something for FREE or next to FREE when you compare it to the full price. You don't have to stock up on every item you use right away, you gradually build it up over time. It could take months and then once you start to run low on something you keep your eyes out for another sale to build it up again. Really good sale prices come and go in cycles and after a while, you'll start to notice the trend.

How to begin your stockpile….

1. Figure out how much money you want to spend each week building up your stockpile. You can start with $20 if you’d like. With sales and coupons, $20 can go very far.

2. Make a list of the things you seem to use most often or run out of the most. Those are things you DO want to stockpile first. Remember, we aren’t just talking about food. You can stockpile health and beauty items too.

3. Again, don’t run out and buy everything at once. When the weekly sales ads come, sit down and look to see if any of the items on your list are on sale that week.

4. Next you want to see if you have (or can get) coupons for those items. Coupons can come from many different sources…. The Sunday newspaper, Magazines, Boxes of products, the mail, printed from the Internet, from your family or friends and you can even purchase coupons on eBay or from a coupon clipping service.

5. To begin, I suggest you ONLY buy items you have coupons for that are on sale that week. Figure out how much you can get with the amount you set aside for your stockpile.

6. Repeat this each week until you have a good stockpile going. Then just replenish as needed.


As you build your stockpile you may find items that never have coupons that you really want to stockpile. That is OK, but ONLY buy them when they are on sale. Remember the purpose to a stockpile is to help you save money. If chicken breast is on sale for $1.29lb then buy as much as your budget allows and then freeze it. Since you won't really find coupons for meat you have to watch for those low prices so you'll know when to stock up.