Five Grocery Items We Think You Need to Buy NOW

Courtesy of HotCouponWorld: Five Must-Stock Grocery Items for you to BUY NOW while they are at Seasonal Low Prices Flour: If you bake or cook, there's no getting around having flour in your cupboard. World wheat shortages we experienced this year are not going to let up in 2009. The current price of a 5# bag of Gold Medal flour in my area is $4.59 a bag. It's nearly doubled in two years. This week and next, stores are selling flour as a loss leader with prices as low as $1.50 for a 5# bag of white flour. In a sealed bag, flour can last upwards of 18 months. Now would be a good time to buy what you need for the year if you can store it. Watch for additional promotions like Safeway's baking promo where you get a money off "on your next order" coupon for spending $30. Sugar: Another commodity that's increasing in price. For the same seasonal reasons as the flour, white, brown and powered sugars are at the lowest annual retail prices. Beef, Pork, and Poultry: USDA is still predicting that there is going to be a huge increase in the price of livestock due to the increased cost of grain feed. Tis the season to stock up on meat for next year. With the holiday's approaching, deals on turkey and beef in particular, are going to be pretty decent, although no way near 2006 lows of $2.99 a pound for whole rib roasts. However, $4.99 a pound, which is where I think it will go, is a good price given the economy for a choice cut of beef, which you can have the butcher cut into steak-size portions and save over half the price when you buy whole versus pre-cut. The same is true of whole pork loin roasts which we'll see sporadically for $1.99 per pound. Buy the whole thing and save, because the prices are going to shift high next year. Note, you can get a printable coupon for turkey here on the third page! Paper and Paper Products: Ok, while paper itself isn't a grocery item, many of us use it to print coupons on. And as much as I'd like to be a bit "greener" in my life, with three boys, paper products are a fact of life. A little tip-off from a friend of mine who is a buyer for one of the national retail chains many of us love....the price of paper next year is going to double. She's doing the buying for six months from now, and that's what their pricing has done. So if you see deals on paper, and paper products, you might consider grabbing them while you can. This is one where I don't have a "why" behind the price increase, but I trust my buyer-friend's judgement on this one. Pastas/Grain Sides: It's my prediction that in order to hold current prices on pastas and grain-based side dishes (think Rice-A-Roni and Hamburger Helper) that we're going to see package size cuts, particularly in the pasta aisle. Packages that are currenly 16 ounces will likely be 12-ounce packages by the end of 2009. The price of wheat is the cause for that. Pasta has a wonderfully long shelf life of 2-3 years if stored properly. And towards Christmas, we'll see some good sales for pasta. So keep your eyes open and be ready to stock up when the sales hit.