Couponing - Part 2

Yesterday I talked about saving on organic meat, I know non-organic meat does go on sale and you can usually find something that you want each week. Here’s the key, pick up a bunch of it, perhaps what you’ll want for a month of that particular cut or type.

Produce, there aren’t a lot of ways to save on fresh produce. BUT and this is a HUGE one kids, Driscoll who distributes a lot of produce all over the country has a 50cent coupon on their website. If you go to a grocery that doubles, that’s a dollar off. When I got the coupon my local store was selling strawberries in 3 pound packages for $3.49 and 1 pound packages for $1.49. Using my coupon, which I could print multiple copies of, I was able to get 3 pounds of strawberries for $1.50 a savings of $2.

The major areas of savings are going to be in toiletries and other grocery type items. (Watch out this part is VERY Glamorous!!) We needed toilet paper, no one had any on sale this particular week, so I went to the interweb and went to Angel Soft, Charmin and Northern’s web sites. Each had a coupon for 50 cents. Wegmans doesn’t see toilet paper in 4 packs, but Target and Giant do, so I used the coupons there and saved $1 on each package. Instead of buying an economy pack of 12+ rolls I bought 4 rolls at a time and got the cost of the rolls down to 25cents a roll vs 72 cents. Tampons, deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, qtips, tooth paste, diaper, wipes, soda, etc, they are all perfect for this type of layering to get savings.

Another big key is noticing trends. How often does your store have toilet paper on sale? How often does meat go on sale? Once you start figuring out the trends you can figure out how much you have to buy at a time. This will help with space, so you don’t have to turn your guest room into a pantry and buy three freezers to store everything else.

Those are my tips, big and small. Just remember this is a process start small and grow with it and let it grow with you. Let the process evolve to meet you and your family’s needs. Any questions, additional advice please leave a comment so everyone can see it.

Couponing - Part 1

Starting May 1st we became "couponers". You may recall I blogged about this experiment back in April. I was skeptical that we would be able to save enough money to make it worth my while.

I spent about 6 hours total in the month of May, with my coupon related pursuits. The largest amount of time was spent at the beginning of the month when I compiled all of my information. I don't think that this is really necessary, but it helped me organize our purchases and see on a large scale where we could save money. Since I only used one grocery store prior to this I was able to log into my account and pull up my past month's receipts. I came up with a spreadsheet and logged everything.

The next step was to decide how many places I would shop. If you are driving all over the place to save 15 cents on something it's not worth it. Since I drive by Giant, Target and Wegmans almost daily, those became my "go-to" places. Fortunately they all come out with their sale flyers on Sundays, this made my life exponentially easier. I also checked out their coupon doubling policies.

Once the flyers came out I would go through them (all online), and plan menus for the week, based what was on sale that week. The first thing I discovered, Giant has sales on their organic meat, a savings of $1.49 a pound when on sale. I've previously mentioned how much I love Wegman's iphone app and again it helped me save money. I went through the Giant flyer and made a grocery list and put everything on my app. As I went through the list on my phone in Giant, if it was less there I would pick it up.

I know I haven't talked about couponing yet, I promise it's part of the equation, but not the only part.

After coming up with my list I went on the interweb and searched for coupons for the items we needed for the week. I was only able to get 5 coupons and only saved about $10 using them, but that's a pretty big deal. This is such a multi-step process I didn't figure I would see huge immediate savings. But I signed up for couponing websites, searched blogs and suddenly everything started coming together.

The next week I saved $70 and the week after $85!!!! Holy cow it was working. I was so excited leaving the grocery I wanted to skip, but I didn't want to look like a total tool. Bottom line it worked for our family and we still ate organic meat and not processed food.

Tomorrow I'll break down even further what to look for and how to shop smarter.

You Inspire Me

After posting about trimming our grocery budget, I got lots of feedback from people. All with ways and ideas on what works for their family. I was so inspired that I have decided to coupon (this is now a verb) in May. One of our local grocery stores double coupons up to $1. Since they don't have a huge organic selection, I will continue shopping at my regular store and then go to the other story once a week. I am going to figure out if A) I'm actually saving money B) the time output is worth the cost savings.

I figure it's going to take a month to really see a difference. As I mentioned before, I don't know if this will really work since we don't buy a lot processed or packaged food, but we do need the essentials, toilet paper, tampons, you know the fun stuff we all like to talk about.

So, my friendly internets, I will do a spreadsheet with the time I spent, what we bought and what we saved, and share at the end of May. I'm actually looking forward to my little adventure.

Trimming the Grocery Budget

I do envy the coupon people that are out there. The Krazy Koupon Ladies, and Extreme Couponing blow my mind. But it never really worked for us, I admit to not being as dedicated to it as some, but we don't buy processed or prepared foods, with a few exceptions, but as my friend Kayla can attest I don't have ketchup in my house.

When I got laid off after Brooks was born we knew that we had to cut our expenses and since we were spending about $1800 a month on food we knew that was a great and easy (or so we thought) place to start. That amount includes all food and beverages, my morning lattes, John's expensive beer, and of course our daily lunches out.

We had originally wanted to cut the food expenses down to $100 a week, but after 3 weeks we found out that this wasn't possible unless we really wanted a decline in quality. So we bumped that budget up to $125 a week. This line item includes groceries AND eating out. Oy!

It wasn't difficult at first since we were all home all the time, our garden was producing and we were spending very little. Then local fresh fruits and veggies started to dry up with the winter and our food costs increased. So we had to stop eating out almost all together until we figured out how to shop smarter.

One cost cutting measure was to cut back on our quantity of meat. The average adult is supposed to eat 3-6oz of meat at a meal. Most people eat 8-10oz, but at $7.99/lb for steak, if we wanted to eat it we had to cut it back, so we did. We allow ourselves to load up on veggies and grains, (mostly veggies), and a lot of meals will start with a salad. Cutting back for us was really a mind over matter principle. This also allowed for leftovers the next day, so we could enjoy the yumminess twice.

This is about the time we started planning our menus as well. Since we buy organic or grass fed meat it almost never goes on sale, so we can't plan our menus based on sale ads. So we got creative and had pseudo cooking contests to see who could get the price per serving on a meal down the farthest. So far we haven't gotten it under a dollar, but we're getting closer. I'm hoping if our garden yields more this year that we will.

The grocery store that we frequent, Wegmans, also has an iphone app as well as a great online site. This allows us to price shop before we get to the store. This saves me time and money. Because I don't go up and down every aisle I save time, and because I don't go up and down every aisle and buy crap I don't really need, I save money. Soon I want to really get into couponing though, I admit I am a HUGE sucker for a good deal. If I can get our grocery bill down more that means I can buy more standing rib roast or clothes. Umm....duh, sign me up.

Brooks eats what we do, but even if he didn't we would make his food. Not all of his meals are exactly what we eat either, so we had to incorporate his portion into our food bill. I know he's eating about $10 extra worth of food a week, but I don't really notice. I'm doubly grateful for a)not noticing and b) knowing that one day he will be eating $10 more worth of food an hour.

So what do you do to help on your grocery budget?