Joan and her visitors drink about six cans of Diet Coke a day. She’s seen the price fluctuate wildly from $2.40 to $3.97 per 12-pack. So if she stocks up only when Diet Coke is at its bottom price, here’s how much she can save:

Top price for Diet Coke	$3.97 per 12-pack	$727 per year
Bottom price for Diet Coke	2.40 per 12-pack	439 per year
Dollar savings	$1.57 per 12-pack	$ 288 per year
BIG SAVINGS =	40%	40%

A savings of $288 is 40 percent off, but it’s just the beginning. Remember, Guerrilla Grocery Shoppers, you are going to multiply savings like this out over your entire grocery list.

Decide Your Discounting Goals

One way to decide when the time is right to stockpile an item is to come up with your own discounting goals. You can use either dollar amounts or percentages or both. I like the percentage method, especially for packaged goods. For example, I have decided that I am only interested in products I can get for at least 50 percent off. I’m greedy. If I stick to those, then I know that stockpiling is cutting my grocery bill in half!

Alternatively, you can get in a groove where you know what good prices are for certain items. In Shop Smart, Save More, author Teri Gault encourages consumers to “buy more than you need when you don’t need it.” Here’s how she uses dollar amounts to decide when to stockpile. Gault says she will buy skinless meat only if it is $2 a pound or less. She likes to stock up on bone-in beef or pork if it’s less than $1.50 a pound and bone-in chicken if it is less than $1 a pound.

Sell-By Dates Are Your Buy-By Dates

Meat on sale is a good deal. Sale meat that’s on clearance because it’s close to the sell-by date is a great deal. It’s perfectly safe. There’s a time cushion with a sell-by date because it’s not a use-by date. Then, when you freeze that meat, you are stopping it in time.

Let Somebody Else Do the Work

If you just can’t get a handle on what things cost at the top and at the bottom, there are websites that will do the work for you. As I mentioned previously, www.CouponMom.com shows you the best sales of the week at hundreds of stores nationwide. You can do what I do and pick a percentage—like 50 percent—and only buy items that are discounted at least that much.

Another helpful site that identifies the best grocery sales is www.TheGroceryGame.com. This site takes it one step further and tells you when a deal is so good that you ought to stock up. (Note: TheGroceryGame.com offers a month-long free trial and then charges a monthly fee, which should pay for itself.)

There are also free blogs where veteran stockpilers show off their best bargains. All you have to do is copy their most inspired moves! One great one is run by two women I interviewed for Good Morning America, Chrissy Pate and Kristin McKee. These two Missouri moms were feeling the financial pinch after they quit their jobs to stay home with their kids. They realized that the one expense they had control of was their groceries.

Hungry for ideas, they hunted around for information about how to save. It was hard at first, but they eventually cut their grocery bills in half. They then started www.BeCentsAble.net to make it easier for other people to do the same. I highly recommend their grocery savings workshops, available around the country and as an online tutorial on their website.

If a Store Is Out of a Sale Item, Ask for a Rain Check

Many stores have rain check policies, so that if one customer (a Guerrilla Grocery shopper like you!) cleans out the shelves during a super sale, other customers won’ t miss out. Often it’s a formal rain check policy, where you actually get a little receipt that shows you are entitled to the sale price when the item is restocked. Ask for this paper proof if it’s a product you really want to stockpile.

BeCentsAble.net provides a forum for dozens of savvy savers from all over the country, who post the best deals they see in the circulars and the stores. They do it as a public service—and to show off! (If your local store isn’t covered on BeCentsAble.net, just Google the store and location, and you are likely to find a blogger who covers it independently.) Here are some examples from a savvy shopper called Nova Thrifty who posted the deals she found at a store in the Washington, D.C., area, where I live.

Nova Thrifty’s Finds	Special Price	Regular Price
Chicken breasts	$8.95/5 pounds	$ 22.45/5 pounds
Porterhouse steak	$ 4.99/pound	$9.99/pound
Milk	$5/two 1-gal. jugs	$5.98/two 1-gal. jugs
85% lean ground beef	$3.98/2 pounds	$7.98/2 pounds
Light and Fit yogurt	$4 for 10	$7 for 10
Canada Dry Ginger Ale	$ 10/five 12-packs	$ 29.95/five 12-packs
Stouffer’s entrees	$ 10 for 5	$ 14.95 for 5
Tropicana Pure Premium	$ 1.88 each	$3.99 each
Breyer’s ice cream	$ 1.88/quart	$4.99/quart
Pepsi	$ 1.99/6-pack	$4.29/6-pack

As you can see, some of the deals this savvy, selfless shopper shared are phenomenal! Like $8.95 instead of $22.45 for five pounds of chicken. That’s 60 percent off! Five 12-packs of ginger ale for $10 instead of $29.95 is 67 percent off! Now let’s see how the savings add up:

Savings If You Copy the Savvy Shopper

10 grocery items at regular price	$ 111.57
10 grocery items at special price	52.67
Dollar savings	$ 58.90
BIG SAVINGS =	53%

A total of 53 percent off—I’ll take it. If we were being truly strategic stockpilers, we would have done even better by skipping the milk, which wasn’t a huge discount, and purchasing extra of the chicken breasts and ginger ale, which were. Are you starting to see how this can work? And how it doesn’t have to be hard? One way to be a Guerrilla Grocery Shopper is to be a copycat!

Learn to See Sales Coming

Successful stockpiling is mostly a matter of knowing what things normally cost, then spotting killer sales and cleaning out the shelves. But it’s also possible to predict sales in advance. Yes, you can gaze into your crystal ball and see prices falling in the future. Here’s how.

Seasonal Savings

One way to predict when sales will be at their lowest point is to pay attention to the seasons. Certain grocery products always go on sale at the same time of year. Some are obvious, like ketchup and mustard around the 4th of July, and pie crust and potatoes around Thanksgiving. But others are more mysterious. For instance, I bet you didn’t know that Quaker puts all its products on sale in January. Or that March is National Frozen Foods Month. And Prego and Ragu have sauce wars in September.

Here’s a list of reliable seasonal savings. Some are predictable because of holidays and the weather. Others are tied to obscure promotional months like National Fiber Month. You’ll want to be on the lookout for these stockpiling opportunities.

January

Bread
Cereal
Chili
Cold-weather meals
Diet foods
Hot tea
Pepsi
Planners
Prunes
Quaker products
Rubbermaid totes
Side dishes
Shelf organizers
Tostitos
Weight-loss products

February

Candy
Canned foods
Chinese food
Chocolate
Heart-healthy foods
Snack foods

March

Beverages
Cleaning supplies
Eggs
Frozen foods
Ham
Kraft products
Paper products

April

Asparagus
Cookware
Ham
Kosher foods
Soy products
Vacuum cleaners
Eggs
Leafy greens
Lamb
Whole grain foods

May

Baked beans
Barbecue sauce
Bottled water
Bug repellent
Cleaning supplies
Condiments
Frozen vegetables
Ground beef
Home maintenance
Hot dogs
Lemonade mix
Paper goods
Plastic plates and cups
Ribs
Soda
Small appliances
Strawberries
Sunscreen

June

Building materials
Cheese
Hardware
Ice cream/yogurt
Tools

July

Condiments
Pickles
Computers
Hamburgers
Hot dogs
Soda

August

Cereal
Cold cuts
Fresh fish
Fresh fruit
Fresh vegetables
Juice
Peaches
School supplies
Waffles

September

School supplies
Breakfast foods
Capri Suns
Campbell’s soups
Canned goods
Cereal
Fruit snacks
Gardening supplies
Housewares
Jelly
Lunchables
Peanut butter
Prego spaghetti sauce
Ragu spaghetti sauce

October

Baking products
Candy
Cheese
Chicken broth
Chocolate chips
Crackers
Cranberries
Instant potatoes
Kraft foods
Marshmallows
Nuts
Pasta
Pie shells
Pizza
Pudding
Stovetop stuffing
Turkey
Vanilla/corn syrup
Whipped cream
Wine

November

Baking ingredients
Candy
Canned goods
Chicken broth
Condensed milk
Cookies
Cranberries
Creamed soup
Flour
Frozen pies
Plants
Sweet potatoes
Thanksgiving foods
Turkey
Yams

December

Baking supplies
Canned goods
Champagne
Party foods
Meat

Sale Cycles

In addition to seasonal savings, Guerrilla Grocery Shoppers can take advantage of sale cycles when stockpiling. Grocery products go on sale at predictable intervals. Lauren A. of Pennsylvania noticed that the cheese she likes is discounted every 12 weeks and the chicken breasts her fiancé enjoys go on sale every four weeks. There’s no across-the-board rule, but if you pay attention you, too, will begin to see how frequently the items on your top 20 list are discounted.

Lauren is very careful with her money, and she also noticed that often the same product is on sale at one grocery store this week and another one next week. That’s because product manufacturers provide store-specific incentives to goose sales of their merchandise, and they move from one store to the next. Remember, if the sale is not at your preferred store, you can price-match it!

The key is to buy enough of your favorite products when they are discounted to get you through to the next sale cycle. Once the sale cycle has passed, you may not see any discounts on that item for a couple of months or more. That’s why it’s important to stock up when you can. It’s kind of like when one airline lowers fares and the rest scramble to follow. Grocery manufacturers are competitive that way, too. But it’s more subtle because peanut butter doesn’t cost as much as a plane ticket.

Watch Out for Scanner Errors

Scanner errors are especially common on sale items. Grocery stores contain an average of about 47,000 different products, according to the Food Marketing Institute. It’s easy for employees to miss some when they’re programming new sales into the register. Studies have shown scanner errors are 3 to 1 in favor of the store—overcharging instead of undercharging. I did a Good Morning America investigation myself, and 5 of the 12 stores we tested made mistakes at the register, some overcharging us by as much as 40 to 60 percent.

Practical Considerations

Okay, this all sounds like grocery greatness, but you probably have a few questions about how much it’s going to cost to build a stockpile, and how much stuff to buy. Fair enough. Here we go.

How Much Does It Cost?

Building a stockpile may sound expensive. After all, we’re talking about hoarding up to six months worth of food, personal care products, and household supplies. But actually, you will not be buying any more of these products than you normally do. You will just be buying them at different times. Remember, instead of purchasing groceries when you need them, you will be purchasing groceries when they are on sale.

Each shopping trip, you will still buy eggs and a few fresh fruits and veggies, but you will also buy whatever categories of groceries are deeply discounted at that time. Some parts of your stockpile will be growing while others are shrinking. You will cook accordingly. It can be a little awkward at first before your stockpile is well - rounded. But you will have everything you need within a couple of months.

How Much Should You Buy?

Some stockpilers believe in hoarding three to six weeks’ worth; others say three to six months’ worth is more like it. I would hate to see you run out of something, rush to the 24- hour store at midnight, and pay a premium for it. So I suggest you try for a two-month stockpile at first, then expand it to four to six months if the strategy is working for you. Storage space can also help you decide the size of your stockpile. Here’s how to think about the three grocery categories:

1. Food. This is where analyzing your receipts could really come in handy. Look at three months’ worth of receipts. Add up the number of chicken breasts, boxes of spaghetti, canned soups, granola bars—whatever stockpileable items your family likes. That will give you a feel for how much to keep on hand.

2. Personal care products. Teri Gault of TheGroceryGame.com has a strategy I like for determining how many personal care products you should stockpile. She suggests keeping the same number of products on hand as there are members of your family. So if you are a family of four, always have four new tubes of toothpaste, four bottles of shampoo, and so on, in your home.

3. Household Supplies. The amount of cleaners, paper towels, sponges, and so on that you should stockpile is less of a concern because they have a very long shelf life. If you miscalculate and buy two years’ worth, who cares? Think of it as cleaning supplies in the bank. You’ll be clean . . . and rich.

This all boils down to one simple concept: To be a truly stellar stockpiler, you should buy what your family likes, what they will use, and whatever is most deeply discounted at any given time. That’s the whole point. Otherwise the effort—and the products—will go to waste.

Bigger Is Not Always Cheaper

People assume you get a better price if you buy chicken broth in humongous cans instead of little ones. Or chips in big bags instead of snack size. Or diapers by the hundreds instead of by the dozens. But I have done several stories over the years where we showed that these very products are sometimes less expensive in smaller packages. It pays to pay attention to unit pricing to avoid this trap.