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As a shopper, one of my primary concerns is saving money on meats — and by meat, I’m referring to beef, pork and even poultry, such as chicken and turkey products. Per-pound pricing in each of these categories continues to rise, and due to multiple economic factors, including fuel and feed costs, these prices are also predicted to rise further. I’ve always taken a best-price-per-pound approach to meats, as even when we’re in a normal sales cycle, they do fluctuate quite a bit.

For example, in my area, ground beef could cycle from a low of $2.99 per pound up to $5.99 per pound, or higher. Pork can cycle from .99 per pound up to $5.99 per pound or more. Chicken can range in price from 0.99/lb. up to $4.99/lb. or more.

Logically, it makes the most sense to purchase meats when their prices are at the lowest point in their sales cycles. If you’re not able to easily recognize the lowest price points in the sales cycles for the cuts of meat you buy most frequently, it is worth familiarizing yourself with them.

Keep an eye on your store’s weekly circulars and the kinds of sales they have — or simply look at the meat cases in your local store and make mental notes on how the prices vary week to week.

By timing your meat purchases around the lowest sale prices in each cycle, you can avoid paying higher prices. For example, three pounds of chicken at 0.99/lb. will cost you $2.97 — but if you buy the same chicken when the price is $4.99/lb., you’ll pay $14.97 — unnecessarily wasting $12 on the same cuts of meat.

This does require a shift in how one shops. Many people head to the store to buy what they want the week they’d like to cook and serve a particular meal made with that cut of meat. However, when you shop and meal plan this way, you’re often at the mercy of whatever price the store happens to be charging for your meats of choice on that week.

Whether there are coupons available or not for meats, we need to shop for them with the same couponing mindset that we use to purchase other groceries: We need to focus on getting the best possible prices for the items we want to buy for our households. Being mindful of the way prices constantly rise and fall helps us recognize the best time to buy.

To save the most money, I meal-plan around the meats I’ve purchased on sale that are currently stored in my freezer. (This is also the reason that many frugal shoppers will invest in a second freezer — it’s easier to buy meats in larger quantities and store more of them to beat these pricing cycles.)

Another practice to consider is purchasing different cuts of meat that are traditionally less expensive than others. I recently purchased a pork shoulder roast weighing more than nine pounds. Its regular price was $2.99 per pound, but I bought it during a sale, paying just .99 per pound. That dropped the price of the roast from more than $27 down to less than $10!

The number of meals we got out of that roast, too, was impressive. We made pulled pork sandwiches one night, tacos another night, and we still have plenty left over for a third meal.

If you’re a beef lover, here’s another option to consider. If you have both the freezer space and the budget for this, you might consider purchasing a portion of a cow directly from a farmer.

Our family recently went in on buying a portion of a cow with multiple other families. It worked out to around $4 per pound, but this also gave us access to many cuts of meat that would normally have been far more expensive than that per-pound price: Ribeye and strip steaks, sirloin and cube steaks, along with roasts, brisket, and other delicious cuts. Doing this allowed us to effectively lock in our beef prices for many months to come.

Email your own couponing victories and questions to jill@ctwfeatures.com.

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