I believe in stockpiling food for a variety of reasons. It saves me from paying top price on items when I need them, and keeps me out of the grocery stores so it saves me money too.

Let’s face it: with gasoline prices hovering around $3.50-$4 per gallon, almost all of us are paying a premium to fill up at the pump these days. Add that cost to rising prices across the board, and we are all searching for additional ways to stretch our dollars to pay for the range of things we need each day, week and month. There is, however, a time-proven (and somewhat time-intensive at least up front) method to combine the discounting power of coupons, sales, and rebates over the long term to free up some much needed cash.

This practice is referred to as “stockpiling.” Finding the super deal and then buying not one or two, but as many as you can use until the next super deal comes up. This requires you to have as many coupons as possible for every item at any given time (and hence, a “wish list” of coupons). Create your own warehouse in your home and you are no longer depending on the store's whim to give you a great price. You can wait them out until the next loss-leader or great deal shows up.

Remember start small and buy extra when you have a few extra dollars. There is no need to go into debt to stockpile. Stockpiling is designed to help you, not hurt you! Super savers have at least a three months supply of basic items, such as toothpaste, shampoo, pasta and rice. Tubes of toothpaste, purchased at 0 – 50 cents a tube during a sale/coupon/rebate, are tubes of toothpaste you are not going to pay $3 each for a month from now. That’s approximately $35 of savings on one item alone! Multiply the savings by the number of tubes your family uses a year, and you can begin to see where we are going and the extra $$ in your pocket.

Many sites, and self-proclaimed super savers, will tell you that this works, and that they pay virtually nothing for groceries. I recently purchased over $250 worth of groceries for $119 thanks to the loss leaders, double coupons and overall great sales!

By shopping at each store for only major sale items, and using coupons, you can literally walk out of the store with groceries and cash back (if the store allows this, some do and some don't).

The solution is to build up a collection of food items and cleaning products in amounts that allow you to only purchase those items when they were on sale and have coupons. Look at your receipts and the items you normally consume, and start tracking the sales. Normally within any 3 month period, virtually everything you purchased at the supermarket would be on sale, typically at a loss for the store (or a loss-leader). There were a few items that couldn’t be stockpiled this way, mostly fresh fruits, vegetables and milk, but that doesn't deduct much from your savings in the long run. You could also use your CVS ECBs or Walgreens Register Rewards to purchase milk. (We'll go into that in another article.)

So, how to stockpile 3 months worth of supplies if you are really going to start cutting costs down? First things first: where are you going to put all this stuff? Think outside of the box: attics, pantries, laundry rooms, under the stairs, shelves in the garage, plastic storage bins with lids, under the bed or sofa, etc.

The best way to go about this is to figure your storage requirements, and create a detailed list of the groceries and supplies typically bought and the quantities used on a weekly/monthly basis.

For frozen goods, if you don't already have one use your savings and purchase a deep freezer. Check out your local classifieds and www.craigslist.org for used ones.

Build up the three month supply of food items (canned, prepackaged, and frozen) and cleaning supplies slowly, always trying to buy items on sale and with coupons whenever possible, for the lowest possible cost.

Figure out your savings:
1) Estimate the total amount you spend in the supermarket each year

2) Take 35% to 50% of that total as savings that can be achieved by stockpiling and using sales and coupons

3) Calculate how many times you can fill up your cars gas tank at a price of $3.50 per gallon using the money you would save at the supermarket and

4) Enjoy the extra time you have to spend doing activities that bring you joy!