Cutting your grocery bill by one tenth doesn't sound like that much but when you add it up over the course of a year, it adds up to some pretty sweet savings to me. I shop at Bi-Lo, a Southern grocery store chain, and for years and years I never looked at my receipt beyond the total. But cut to about a year ago, when Patrick noticed a little blurb towards the bottom of the receipt.
Save $5 off of your next $40 shop? Sign me UP. It involves taking your receipt and within 72 hours of the shopping experience, going to www.tellbi-lo.com and completing a short survey. It takes less than five minutes and you can print out a tidy $5 coupon at the end. Every single receipt has this on there, so you can take the survey and print a coupon for every shopping trip (over $40) ever!
I've been pretty faithful with this and considering my average grocery store bill comes to $50 a week, I'm saving a tenth of my grocery bill. Over the course of a year, say I shop 50 out of 52 weeks a year, I'm saving $250! Your mathematical results may vary, of course, depending on how much you spend weekly.
For those weeks when I just really don't need $40 worth of items from the store, I'll find a non-perishable loss leader like paper towels or canned tomatoes and stock up to the $40 limit. Some times I've come in as close as $40.05 and with the coupon, it turns into a $35 spend for the week!
Other stores also print coupons on the back of their receipts so next time you go to the grocery store, give the entire receipt a good eyeballing before tossing it in the recycling bin — you might be throwing away five dollar bills.