Free Coupons

Posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

When you go grocery shopping pay careful attention to the packaging. You may be getting less product than you think.

Many grocery products are seemingly becoming a product of a shrink ray. While the packages look the same, the fact is that you are getting less of the product than you once did. A good example of this is diapers. Most of the major manufacturers are giving you a fewer number of diapers than you used to get.

Another practice of the shrinkage strategy to offer “cooler” products that catch your eye and cost the same as the regular product but offer less. For example, this weekend I purchased some boxed macaroni and cheese. The kids really wanted the Scooby-Doo and Pokemon shaped pasta instead of the regular pasta. All of the boxes, regardless of pasta shape, cost 99 cents without sales or coupons. The boxes looked to be the same size, but there was a difference. The regular macaroni and cheese boxes contain 7.5 ounces of product. The character boxes? They contained only 5.5 ounces of product, about one less kid-sized serving in my household.

Here are some ideas for coping with grocery shrinkage:

1. Check all of your labels carefully.
2. Dig around the shelves to see if the same product comes in multiple sizes or weights for the same price.
3. Compare products with store brands which are often the last products to be affected by shrinkage.
4. Clip coupons to decrease your cost per product.

Don’t forget to check out our printable coupons below.

Posted in: How to Save | Comments (0) | Join Discussion