I look at the advertising fliers on Wednesday to see what is on sale, if I need to go grocery shopping. I can find good prices at the local grocery stores that way, and I always plan to stop by when I'm in the area so I don't make an extra trip. I drive a pickup because I need the space, but I in turn drive it as little as possible to avoid using a lot of gas. The trick with shopping for sale stuff at the grocery chains is to not get sucked into buying the "regular priced" stuff that is so inflated in price.

I shop at stores that have their own obscure brands. There's a great little store in the Dallas-Fort Worth area called Save-A-Lot that has excellent products for 40-50% of the cost of Albertson's, Kroger, etc. The difference? They have unusual brand names. Get over the big brand names, and you save a lot of money.

For clothes, we start at the thrift store. I have taught the kids to go down the aisles looking for the color, size, and brands they want. We always come away with plenty of good quality clothes. The most I've ever spent in there at one time is $60, and I came away with a dozen pairs of long pants for all of us, several shirts, and a couple of sweaters. This is called "reuse" and it's a time honored tradition in many parts of the world. From there, we visit the stores like Ross, and check out clearance stuff before moving to the regular aisles. The department stores have caught onto the success of Ross and TJ Max and you can go to very good stores like Foleys, Dillards, and Nordstrom and find their deeply discounted stuff off in their own section of the store. We start there, and only after we've exhausted that, do we go into sale and full-price. We rarely ever end up in the full-price stuff. The clothes that are sold at the department store are generally of a much better quality that the stuff Walmart sells.

We can live without Walmart.

SRS