Now, here’s the savings you could get buying just those five items wholesale:

Retail price	$36.65
Wholesale price	28.04
Dollar savings	$ 8.61
BIG SAVINGS =	23%

A 23 percent discount is really respectable for natural, organic, and green products. It is always more difficult to find savings on those because they are pricier to begin with, the profit margins are slimmer, and they are in high demand. So grocery buying club members are happy to get such a healthy savings on healthy products! And remember, that savings will be multiplied times an entire shopping list.

Intrigued about starting a grocery buying club? There are wholesalers in all parts of the country who sell to buying clubs. Here’s a website that lists many of them: http://CoopDirectory.org.

While You’ re Starting Clubs, Form a Cooking Club

Cooking clubs work well with five families. Once a week you cook dinner for your family and the four others and deliver it to them. The other four days they cook and deliver to you. You save time by cooking only one night a week. You save money by buying in bulk. Ginny B. of Virginia says she cut her grocery bills in half this way. It’s possible you could save so much that you can dine out on weekends guilt-free!

Grocery Auctions

Another wild card Guerilla Grocery Shopping strategy is to attend a grocery auction. You heard me right—a grocery auction, where an auctioneer is auctioning off . . . groceries. It sounds weird, doesn’t it? You’ve got the same fast-talking auctioneer, but he’s hawking apples instead of antiques. Amazing!

For yet another GMA story—we are obsessed with groceries—we attended a grocery auction in New Haven, Indiana. There were about 500 people at the Indiana auction, all there through word-of-mouth, and they were loving it.

A grandmother named Donna M. told us she was grateful for the food auction because she’s on a fixed income and it has allowed her to eat a healthier variety of foods and SAVE BIG. David T., who had just been laid off, echoed these comments saying that he only spent $150 dollars on items that would normally cost $450. Everybody we met said food auctions have a buzzing, social atmosphere that’s way more exciting than a trip to the grocery store!

It works just like a regular auction, with one key difference. Since there’s more than one of each product; everyone who wants an item walks away with it in hand. The auctioneer gets people bidding on an item, say frozen French fries. Once the price will go no higher, that’s the price everybody who wants that product pays.

Most food auctions offer hundreds of different foods and household supplies. Some are surplus goods, like you’d get at a discount store such as MacFrugal’s or Big Lots. There are also a lot of dinged and damaged packages, with perfectly good products inside. You will also see items close to their expiration dates.

Expired Food Is Legal

Selling expired foods is not only legal but perfectly safe. The FDA explains that the products may lose some taste quality and nutritional value, but they are not dangerous. The one exception is infant formula because babies count on it for all their nutrition.

By bidding for groceries instead of buying them, you can save 50 to 90 percent! But bidder beware! In the excitement of an auction atmosphere, it’s also easy to overpay, so it’s essential that you know what your favorite foods normally cost so you’ll know whether you’re really bagging a bargain.

I put the auction prices to the test by comparing them with prices at a grocery store. I picked a random cross section of products. Here’s our shopping list:

• Lysol disinfectant spray

• Swanson’s chicken broth

• Horizon organic milk

• Triscuits

• Six-pack of V-8 juice

• Six-pack of Odwalla smoothies

Robin Roberts was oohing and ahing when I revealed the results to her on the Good Morning America set in New York, because, the auction yielded a 66 percent savings!

Benefit of Buying at a Grocery Auction

Store price for six items on list	$34.12
Auction price for six items on list	11.50
Dollar savings	$ 22.62
BIG SAVINGS =	66%

Two-thirds off! Remember, earlier in the grocery section, we talked about how expensive organic milk is at about $6.49 a gallon? At this auction people were getting it near the expiration date for just $2.75 a gallon. They would then freeze it, which makes the expiration date meaningless. (It is perfectly fine to freeze milk.) The best bargain of all was the Odwalla juice, which turned out to be a whopping 88 percent savings!

To find a grocery auction near you, check out the website of the National Auctioneers Association: www.Auctioneers.org. The site has a tool you can use to search for auctions and auctioneers by zip code.

Don’t Assume Going-Out-of-Business Sales Are Great Deals

Many going-out-of-business sales are run by professional liquidators who make a business out of going out of business. They usually raise prices up to the full manufacturer suggested retail price and then discount from there, so you could be paying more than you would have when the store wasn’ t going out of business. There are some bargains, but you need to shop and compare just like you always do.