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FOLSOM-

For most people, a big chunk of the family’s budget is food, and making the most of every dollar is critical. There are a lot of ways to save when you head to the grocery store: cards, coupons etc … but what works and what doesn’t?

The promise: We decided to put one of the grocery ‘giants’ to the test. Walmart TV ads promise they’ve got the lowest prices around without using a savings card, but is it true? Those commercials show a Walmart representative comparison shopping item for item, looking at the pricing differences. The only way to know if it’s really true is to do it ourselves, so that’s just what we did.

The test: FOX40 viewer Jenny Suster agreed to help us out. She lives in Folsom, she’s a mom, works full time and says she doesn’t usually shop at Walmart for groceries. Perfect. We asked Jenny to go shopping at another competing grocery store, then bring her receipt and go shopping with us at Walmart for the exact same items. Some of the items on Jenny’s list were the staples: bread, peanut butter, spaghetti, pasta sauce. I won’t go through all of them, but safe to say there were 15 items. We didn’t compare prices as we shopped with Jenny, instead we decided to wait until the moment of truth at the checkout counter.

The results: After all 15 items were scanned our total came to $28.05 at Walmart. The exact same 15 items at the ‘other’ grocery store cost $36.00.  So our Walmart shopping trip ended up costing us about $8.00, less or a savings of about 20%. But we wanted to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, so we gathered a few more receipts from other stores, chose 4 random items and did a quick comparison. The four items were tea, crackers, coffee creamer and eggs. Here’s how the prices compared in our spot check.

Tea: Walmart $3.48 Other store $4.59

Crackers: Walmart $2.50 Other store $4.99

Eggs: Walmart $3.93 Other store $3.99

Coffee Creamer: Walmart $1.98 Other store $2.39

So according to FOX40’s test, the Walmart promise holds-up. Every item we compared turned out to be less than the national chain competitor.