What Does It Mean to Stock Pile?

Stocking piling is buying enough of an item at a low price for your family until it goes on sale again!  Over the course of a few months, it is not unusual for a grocery item’s price to fluctuate by 50% or more. One week your favorite box of cereal will cost $4.00, and a few weeks later it may be on sale for $2.00.  If you only bought cereal all year, at one box a week, for two dollars a box, you would save about $100 in a year on that one item alone.  The average household may buy 100 different items in a typical week.  Imagine how much you could save if you bought every single item only when it is at its lowest price?   Every item is not at its lowest price every week, but you can learn to pay the lowest price on all of your items every time you buy them when you know how to use the stocking up approach.  I can’t believe how much prices fluctuate, but have been tracking and comparing prices and the price of an item truly changes so much over the course of a year.  When you know the price range for your common items, you will be able to spot when they hit their lowest price. At that point, you would be smart to stock up by buying four to six weeks’ worth of that item, whether you have a coupon or not.   You will find that when you take this approach you’ll be stocking up on a few of your common items every week. By the time you have gone through your supply of any particular item, you’ll most likely find that it is at its lowest price again! Just in time to stock up again. The key to really saving money is to buy items when they are at their lowest price, not necessarily when you run out of the item. By taking this “stocking up” approach, you will be saving an average of 50-70% off of these items.  You can see that when you get in the habit of using the “stocking up” approach, you’ll never pay $4 a box for your favorite cereal again!