I’m not the kind of shopper who painstakingly pours through all of the sales flyers for different stores before heading to the store. Or at least I haven’t been. That’s more of my husband’s style. I know I should, especially living here on Salt Spring Island, where the cost of living tends to be a little higher due to the low competition and higher costs of getting products here. In fact, when Dear Old Hubby G started living here, a few months before I could join him, he got in the habit of looking at all the flyers before he shopped. He expressed to me how that seemed like the best possible way to make our money stretch in this community, and how different each of the two grocery stores could price their products.
If you don’t pay attention to the sales flyers and shop accordingly, buying certain items here and others there, you could stand to waste a lot of money. (Psst… There’s a sweet quick and easy healthy breakfast idea at the end of this post, so keep scrolling even if you don’t like saving money.)
However, I’m lazy, disorganized, and strapped for time. All in all, I’m basically just huge, steaming hot mess. I don’t think I could honestly say I looked closely at any of the sales flyers after joining my husband here, and it’s been three years now. That was, of course, until I was turned on to the Flipp app. It’s amazing. Trust me, I’ve been singing it’s praises to my husband for the past few weeks, and I’m not about to stop.
The basis of this circular shopping app (and website) is to have all your local sales flyers at your fingertips, based off your postal code and store preferences. You can easily touch the screen to mark items you’re interested in and “clip” coupons to use at the till. There’s shopping list feature which automatically pulls in items from the different flyers to compare and quickly recognize where you should get what from for the best deal at the time.
One of the features I love is that you can easily search for an item you need to see if there are any sales on at any of your local stores. This came in really handy just last week when we were driving home through town and I had a craving for frozen burritos (why are the things you craved as a child not nearly as tasty as you remembered?) and wanted to know if one of the stores had them on sale. So I opened up the Flipp app and typed “burrito” into the search bar. Low and behold, the clipping from the flyer for one of the stores popped up and let me know they were on for a wicked deal, and so quickly that we were able to stop then and there to pick them up. Golden, right?
You can also use the app to get your stores to price match then and there, by showing them the sales flyer from the competing business. I haven’t personally tried this yet, but I’ve heard positive stories from those who have. When it comes to coupons, there’s a section specifically for that, too. A whole bank of coupons that are currently valid, which you can print out to bring into store to save even more money.
The Flipp app isn’t just for groceries, either. Pharmacies, hardware stores, pet stores, office suppliers, and home essentials are some of the places that are included in this sales flyers app of awesomeness, in addition to the many grocery stores. You can find sales on just about anything that matters to you. You can even toggle on the % bar to a specific percentage off regular price to have everything that’s below that percentage off grayed out. This makes it really simple to see the best deals easily.
This shopping app is fantastic for where we live, here on Salt Spring, as it’s customary for many of us to make off-island trips to do big shops in an effort to save money. Being able to quickly and easily compare what’s on sale where helps us know whether or not taking the ferry over to the bigger shopping destinations is worth our funds and efforts at the time, and to save time running around to the different stores, blindly guessing where might have the best deals on what we need. We’ve been back and forth between stores so many times, realizing we paid more than we needed to and returning items we found at better prices elsewhere. No more!
Last week I went into town not once, but twice, in order to see how much I could save by watching the sales and buying the best deals at each of the two major grocery stores here. This is something I never do, as my aforementioned laziness, disorganization, and time shortage keeps me going to one store over and over, disregarding what might be better purchased at the other. Here’s what I found.
My first trip was to Thrifty’s where I bought items from my shopping list that I had found the best value there. I ended up spending $90.21 with a total savings of $30.71. Then I went to Country Grocer to finish shopping for the rest of the items I needed. I spent $111.99 there, and saved a total of $40.29. That means that with a total spending of $202.20, I saved $71.00 on items that I needed. Not bad, hey?
Now, I wanted to share something I made with all those groceries I stocked up on, because what good are groceries if you don’t eat them? This recipe is a super simple way to make a healthy breakfast (or anytime snack, really) that includes protein, dairy, fruit, and whole grains without a lot of effort. It’s also a part of the Flipp Summer Food Challenge. You can’t get much summer-ier than blackberries!
This was the weirdest thing to me when my husband first introduced me to cheese and jam on toast. Who puts cheese and jam together? Turns out it’s actually an amazingly delicious combination, and I took it even one step further here by using spicy cheese to get that sweet and spicy tango of tastiness in my mouth. My two-year-old was just as skeptical about this crazy concoction when I made it up for her (with cheddar instead of spicy cheese). After taking a bite, however, she has become a serious fan of toasted cheesy jam muffins.
Step 1: Toast that healthy breakfast muffin.
Step 2: Slice a bit of cheese.
Step 3: Slather toasted muffin in blackberry jam.
Step 4: Top with cheese.
Step 5: Enjoy!
Happy shopping, and happy, healthy eating, everyone! If you try the Flipp app, I’d love to hear how your experience goes. Please leave me a comment in the space below this post. I’d also love to connect with you on social media. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.
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Catch ya on the Flipp side. (Ha. See what I did there?)
Disclosure: This post has been proudly sponsored by Flipp. While they introduced me to their awesomeness, all of the above experiences, opinions, and tastiness are my own. For a peek at my full disclosure policy, click here. If you think you have something myself and my readers can benefit from and might want to work with me, click here for more info.
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