1. Eating at home. 99% of the time, I like what I make at home compared to what I eat at a restaurant. For the most part, when we do eat out it's because I don't feel like cooking. So my laziness is costing me.
2. Planning. Instead of going to the grocery store practically every time before I make dinner was getting expensive. When I plan my weekly menu and shop once a week, then I cut out the multiple trips of miscellaneous spending.
3. Shop the sales. About 75-80% of my savings on my grocery bills are from shopping the sales. I literally look at the weekly flyers for each grocery store, front-to-back, several times. I am the person in our household who does the shopping, so I know generally how much things cost. When I see a screamin' deal, I'll stock up 4+ at a time. I also look at the flyers to see what's on sale and where I can use a coupon for additional savings.
4. Coupons. When I initially tried to clip coupons, I got really discouraged. I looked through the Sunday paper and found that 60% of the coupons were cleaning products/deodorant/Air Wick refills/check design order forms. And the food coupons were like fruit rollups and Lil' Smokes, both of which I don't eat. Becca gave me some great tips (like the coupon binder), and I learned some other helpful hints from couponmom.com (it's a FREE resource), along with creating some things that work for me. When I got to the point where I really did need to start saving money, I decided to give it another try but with a different approach. I will say that clipping coupons take the most time out of this whole ordeal, but I am saving money so it's worth it to me. Yes, it's an ordeal. It's easy, it just takes time. I've heard about the coupon service like couponsense.com, but you have to pay a monthly fee for them to tell you that Pillsbury cinnamon rolls are on sale at Albertsons. If I'm already doing all of my "homework" PLUS buying the Sunday papers myself PLUS clipping the coupons myself, it's a waste of my money to pay a monthly service to do what I'm already doing. AND, it cuts out of my overall savings for the month anyways, so that type of service doesn't work for me.
Why coupons work for me:
1. I shop at the conventional grocery stores. As much as I would love to, we can't afford to do everything home-grown/organic/bleach-free. If I had the money, I really would shop at whole foods for everything and buy all seventh generation hygeine and cleaning products. Hopefully in the near future I can. The only thing that we do buy "natural" always is laundry detergent because I'm a sensitive gal. Other than that, I buy the good ol' proctor and gamble-ish brands.
2. By using coupons and shopping the sales, I can save more at the grocery store than at Costco. We still shop at Costco, but for a few items like Salmon and hummus.
3. I stay organized. Coupons can turn into a nightmare real quick if you aren't disciplined to organize your couponage. I get two Sunday papers a week. I found that I really do save more when I get the coupons from two papers a week. We give one of those papers to a neighbor to read and we read the other one, and then we recycle them both. You can get other coupons for free by visiting your favorite brands' websites, the grocery store websites, or the grocery flyers themselves. And you can combine a manufacturer coupon with a store coupon for added savings. Safeway has been offering some good store coupons lately. Or you could swap coupons if you don't use one thing and a friend does... I have a lot of baby-ish coupons if anyone wants them.. just don't know when I'll see you next. (Yes, I clip them anyways because diapers and formula are spendy essentials, right?)
The Method:
1. Use a three-ring binder to organize your coupons. Envelope organizers don't work because you have to go through each envelope section everytime you walk down a different aisle at the grocery store, and it will take up more unnecessary time.
In your binder, 1.) Plastic folder to hold a notepad, pen and the weekly grocer flyers. 2.) divide your folder into sections. Mine is pretty expansive with the dividers: Produce, Dairy, Freezer, Canned, Boxed, Hygeine, Beverage, etc., etc. 3.)Each section has the plastic pockets for baseball trading cards (a tip from Becca) to slip the coupons in ($2.99 for a 10-pack at OfficeMax).2. Make a list. I have a letter envelope labeled for each grocery store that I go to. I make a list for each grocery store that I am going to that week. I'll pull out the coupons that correspond with the sales for that particular store and put it into it's envelope along with the list.
I don't have my camera with me, so I'll take some pics of my organization tonight and post them. I hope this helps someone. Becca helped me a lot by giving me an idea on how to get organized. Thanks, Becky!
3. Go shopping! So when I go to the grocery store, I'll take my entire binder with me (just in case I see a great deal that I have a coupon for that wasn't mentioned in the flier. If I have my coupon binder with me, it will save me a trip.), along with my list for that particular grocery store. If I don't need my binder, great. I'll just grab what's on my list, hand them the pre-sorted coupons that were in my grocery store envelope and it's a pretty quick trip. With all of my prepwork, my grocery store trips are quick. I asked customer service with Fry's and Safeway, and they both told me that they will double a coupon up to $1.00 always, so that's good. I haven't shopped at Alberstons in a long time but I'm going this week, but I'm going to check to see what their policy is.
The pay-off is there, I promise. We really have cut our food spending by 35%. When I go to the store now, we'll save 35-50+% by shopping the sales and using coupons. I save the majority by doing the sale thing, but I'll save an additional $8-$12 at a time by using coupons. It's not huge, but over a month's time, using coupons saves me about $50. And that's just for a two-person household.
The pay-off is there, I promise. We really have cut our food spending by 35%. When I go to the store now, we'll save 35-50+% by shopping the sales and using coupons. I save the majority by doing the sale thing, but I'll save an additional $8-$12 at a time by using coupons. It's not huge, but over a month's time, using coupons saves me about $50. And that's just for a two-person household.
I don't have my camera with me, so I'll take some pics of my organization tonight and post them. I hope this helps someone. Becca helped me a lot by giving me an idea on how to get organized. Thanks, Becky!
So I went to CVS Pharmacy and Albertsons today after work. Here are my purchases. True, I can't really make a meal with these items combined, but they were all items that we eat/use, and it was a remarkable savings:
Amount total for both receipts: $27.49
Total amount saved: $44.42 (62% savings), $11.75 of which were coupons. Some screaming deals from combining the coupons with the great sales were the Fiber One cereal at $1.30 each; One of the bags of frozen broccoli was FREE; and the yoplait yogurt was $0.50.
Let me know what you think, if you have any tips, how much you've saved in your shopping trips, etc.
7 comments:
We're going to have a convo about this, because we both had the same fruit roll up/glade plug in's issue. If you're saying you're really saving money, then I'll give it another go.
I do use coupons for baby food and diapers (I get a TON in the mail, on an almost daily basis, thanks to all the baby websites I visit), but I don't know how to use them to their fullest advantage. I remember to bring them in, I look for the exact product, I get my 50 cents, and I'm like, "hmmm... that was very little payoff" and so I wonder if I would have been better off just buying a different brand.
I'm the reason people like you and Becca can keep using coupons to get your groceries for free. I'm the idiot who makes the system work.
Renee, there are so many sales on diapers. Fry's just had one this past week on Huggies. I'm a dork. I can't believe I know that.
Sniff! I'm so proud! Go Erin! Just FYI Safeway, Fry's, and Bashas' all double their coupons. Albertson's does not. :( Right now through Oct. 28 Fry's is tripling all their coupons up to $1.00. (Meaning you can get up to a 1.00 total off) Fry's has campbells tomato soup going on sale tomorrow and with the coupons they come out to be 35 cents a can. Wahoo! Might I also suggest you get into the CVS extra buck thing. Yes you have to front the money, but I intially invested about 20 bucks and now I just keep rolling my extra bucks to be buy more things that offer extra bucks. So fun! Walgreens also has register rewards, and an awesome rebate program. You might want to look into it or ask me if you have questions. :)
I know this is really excessive, but I am bummed about the campbell's tomato soup. I bought it last week and already used my coupon, so I got them for $0.40 a can instead of $0.35. I know, I know.... nerd alert!
Who knew that free frozen vegetables could be so exciting? Just so you know that you're not the only one in the nerd club...I get up on wednesday's and am at the store by 7 am so I can first pick of the stuff. I don't want getting stuck with a flavor of something I don't like, and if something is free I want my free stuff now instead of having to get a rain check or revisit the store 4times.
I see M&Ms. You've made me a believer.
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