I recently read a book called "The Coupon Mom's Guide to Cutting Your Grocery Bills In Half" by Stephanie Nelson($9.73 at Sam's Club) that inspired me to take a look at where I can cut costs. This will enable me to do more for my family and for others with what I save. It takes some effort but will reap nice rewards. I will be posting ideas and would welcome yours as well. That way we can combine all of our knowledge to discover even more.
Here are some of the Coupon Mom's ideas worth noting. First she has a website link you may want to visit to get links to various couponing sites, such as Red Plum, Smart Source, and Coupon.com. If you sign up for email reminders, the site will let you know when new coupons are posted. You can select the ones you want and print them off. There are a few limitations to these sites as the coupons will eventually run out and you can only download them a certain number of times. The Coupon Mom site also has summaries of current deals running at stores, such as Walgreens, Walmart, and Target as well.
The book also gives you saving techniques such as stocking up on sale/couponed items to be able to shop your pantry later and pricing all of your grocery items at multiple stores (like I did with my excel spread sheet of Walmart, Aldi's, Sam's, and the Neighborhood Market) so you will know who has the best everyday, sale, and couponed price. Let me know if you would like an emailed copy of mine as I don't know how to attach to a blog.
The book gives a list of 8 saving steps to start with:
1.Plan a grocery budget that you can afford. It may help to write down your spending for several weeks to months by saving your recipts.
2.Break your spending down into weekly amounts to make saving more easily.
3.Spend cash as this has been proven to hurt you more mentally so you spend less.
4.Make sure to not waste your food by monitoring what isn't eaten and making it accessible or taking it off your grocery list. Some examples are serving "reasonable portions to children, having leftover night or lunch, and having a leftover shelf in your frig.
5.Buy items that take you 5 minutes or less to prepare instead of "pre-cooked, pre-washed, or pre-cut" as the money you save justifies your time.
6.Cook at home.
7.Avoid fast food.
8.Use her ideas to find "less-expensive, comparable substitutes for common foods". This is an area we can share with one another in another blog post.
Grocery List Planning
1.Make your list of meals and all ingredients you will need, plus snacks, paper and cleaning products, and toiletries. Make sure to take your schedule and perishables into account.
2.If you have time, examine the weekly specials online or in the newspaper to determine what are the deals you need. Several of the websites will let you make a shopping list straight from their circular to save time and confusion such as Walgreens. Sam's Club has their Click N Pull list you can make and submit for your groceries to be shopped and ready for you.
2.Try to shop only one time a week. The more you are in the stores, the more you spend.
She also discusses couponing which I am only still learning to do, so I will wait to post more on this once I am more learned. I have included several existing blogs at link and and that discuss couponing strategies. Check them out!
There are a bunch more tips in her book. Buy it or watch for more posts if I get a chance.
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Get the biggest coupon bang and pair them with a sale. Target and Walgreen's allow you to "stack" a manufacturers coupon from the paper or web with one of their store specific coupons. These produce cheap and even FREE deals. Also Harp's still doubles coupons up to .50 cents. This really makes some of those smaller denomination coupons worth it!
ReplyDeleteI like the artisan breads from Walmart. I've found they put the "day old" reduced items out about 9:00am.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Braum's in B'ville near 540 has great prices on milk. I buy 1% for $2.59 there.