Sales Cycles

I've talked about Sales Cycles a couple of times, but what exactly am I talking about? For each month of the year, you can typically look for certain things to go on sale around that time of the year, every year.

For instance, in the month of October, these are the things you will likely find on sale:

OCTOBER - Stock up on holiday foods – Stove Top, turkey, instant mashed potatoes, broth, cranberries, marshmallow, ice cream, pie shells, whipped cream, pudding. Look for great Kraft deals again this time of year. Piggyback those Kraft coupons when you can. Crackers are a biggie - going on for $1 or less a box. Lots of extra deals like $ off cheese WYB crackers. The real kicker is the after Christmas food deals! Save your coupons because pie fixings, fried onion, broth and canned green beans will be on deep discount.
• Cars
• Houses
• Fishing Equipment
• Crystal, Silver, and Glassware
• Candy
· Baking/candy-making items (choc chips, sprinkles, vanilla, corn syrup, nuts, etc)

Knowing this, I can start looking ahead for coupons for these things and when I see those sales cycling through, I have my coupons ready to combine with a sale and I scoop up so many things for almost nothing when planning this way.

For example, last November, I was finding Stove Top on sale, right on schedule. Since I knew this was going to happen, I looked around for Stove Top coupons and found quite a few at my local grocery store for .50 off ea box. Target ran a sale for Stove Top, .75 a box. A quarter per box ain't bad, but then when I went to cash in on this deal at Target, right there in the same aisle as the Stove Top, were tearpad coupons that stated, "Buy 3 boxes, get 4th free". Ok, so I paid .75 for 4 boxes. That's a little more than .18 a box! I can't remember how much I bought, but I'm still working on that stash. And, just in time for the next sales cycle of Stove Top, I'm down to my last 4 boxes and looking for the deals again. Just last week I found more tearpad coupons for the "buy 3, get 1" and grabbed a few in preparation for another run on ST.

This is just one example of MANY of the items you use that you can anticipate going on sale when you know about the Sales Cycles. With all of the items our families use, if we can anticipate sales the way I did for the Stove Top, and the deals are as sweet, we can build a nice healthy stockpile for so little!

Here is a list of the coming Sales Cycles coming for November and December.

NOVEMBER -
• Winter Apparel and Accessories
• Quilts and Blankets
• Heating Devices
• Turkey, Sweet Potatoes
• Canned goods (soup, chicken broth, condensed milk, veggies etc)
• Baking goods

DECEMBER –
• Toys
• Gift Items
• Party ware
• Post-Holiday Sales
• Party Foods, Baking Goods, and Various Meat
• Canned goods (broth, soups, etc)


"Year-round after a holiday, you can always pick up cheap cookie dough and any food related to a holiday.

Continual sales are candy, popcorn, chips, anything snacky, cereal (heavier in the fall/winter, but still around in the spring).
Frozen food sales seem to centralize on a brand and the switch brands the next month. I think the manufacturers buy slot time for sales. So last month, Stouffers was on sale hard, now lean cuisine is. Save the entire frozen coupon and then keep checking back for the brand of the month.

Frozen pizzas go on sale in the fall and then again the spring; not often in the summer because people don't want to turn their ovens on in the summer.

By all means, this isn't everything that you can get on sale, but if you follow the cycle and stock up (I never buy BBQ sauce in the winter), then you can get where you have enough on hand and only need to refill when the items are in season. The result is that you spend less and less with each successful cycle"

You can find the Sales Cycle for the whole year HERE and HERE at HCW. Make sure to check both as the last one has more detailed info.