Coupon-Shopping
Thanks for your note, LeAnne. What my mom and I did was not anything spectacular but it sure did save us a lot of money when we were first married. I spent around 2-3 hours total per week on this -- reviewing the store sales, reviewing my coupons, and planning a menu for the week based upon this, clipping and organizing new coupons, and shopping at two different stores. It was worth it because I could pretty easily (with thought and planning) stick to a $20-$25 maximum grocery budget per week. By combining coupons with store sales and buying mostly reduced produce and making mostly all our food from scratch, we ate well on a small budget.Hi Crystal,Just wanted to drop you a note and let you know how much I enjoy reading your blog. =) I try and check it daily and your posts are always encouraging.I was wondering if you'd consider doing an entry on your blog about coupon shopping. I know you've mentioned it before, and I'd really be interested in hearing more. I know you said that your mom was "the best" and taught you. I'm not really sure what I want to know, but I know you've said that you can get quite a bit of groceries for very little. With 9 people in our family, I'd love to know how you do that! =)
-LeAnne
I stopped using coupons after we had Kathrynne because I don't have as much time now and my shopping time is very limited. We shop at Aldi for much of our food and then supplement what we can't get there by buying some things at a nicer grocery store. I've found that by careful planning, I can easily plan a good and wholesome menu and stay within our current $35 weekly grocery budget.
There is a really good article on coupon shopping here. I was wondering if others would like to share on this subject: Do you use coupons for grocery shopping? If so, where do you get them (your local paper, online, etc.)? Do you ever pay for coupons (There are places you can buy coupons for a fee.)? Do you save money using coupons (That's supposed to be the goal, I know, but it is not always what happens) or do you find yourself more easily buying things you don't need by shopping with coupons? How much extra time does it take to shop using coupons?
posted by Crystal Paine at 2:31 PM
11 Comments:
I use the thegrocerygame.com
For a very small fee I can print out a weekly list that tell me how to best use the coupons from the Sunday newspaper. It has been a big help and savings to our family!
Kitten
I always use coupons. I would estimate I spend no more than an hour to hour and a half a month clipping the coupons and then pulling them out to use before shopping. I never "pay" for coupons but as I like newspapers anyway, I intentionally get 3 Sunday newspapers, so I have 3 sets of coupons. That is plenty for us.
I only clip coupons for products we already use. As I make my grocery list I pull out the relevant coupons and I put a star next to the item name on the grocery list, indicating that there is a coupon for that item. I fold the list in half with the coupons in the fold.
I do give a quick scan to our grocery store's weekly circular and if I have any coupons for products we use which are on sale, I'll add those to the list for greater savings.
I don't spend any extra time at the store -- I just get the items on my list and hand over the coupons at checkout. For our family of six I have saved as much as $200 a month using coupons. (Our store doubles the savings.) I consider that an excellent "salary" for the time I invest :) and feel that to skip coupons would, in essence, be "throwing away money" our family could use on other areas. Best wishes, Laura
You might try the website www.cairo.com You select your zip code, then you can search for items that are on sale. For example, search for diapers, and it will bring up all the stores with diapers on sale and show the weekly circular. So if you have a coupon for a certain item, you can easily and quickly see if it is on sale anywhere. This way you can combine the savings of sale items along with using coupons.
Kristin
I have a different view. I personally only use coupons on occasion and then they are mostly for health and beauty products or the occasional cleaner or item for the home. Over the years I have found that one can spend more money actually with coupons (when I used mostly coupons I spent more). Now, I cook solely from scratch and don't eat prepackaged foods due to health issues - even with food challenges (everything cheap I am intolerant to: bread, potatoes, wheat, dairy) we can eat for 2 people at about $40/$50 per week, and that is utilizing a health food store to fill in what I can't get at the regular grocery store. I also in general don't buy any meats over $2 per pound (I wait for sales and buy larger quantities to last) and we live in expensive New England.
i'm amazed that there are so many stores in other parts of the country that take coupons in addition to the product being on sale. there's no such thing as that here (and i live in a rather large city)! occassionally one of our grocery stores has a "double coupon day", but even then the total of groceries (before coupons/sales) has to be $25 or more which is way too much!
I recommend a book called The Great Grocery Giveaway by Angie Klaproth. It was a tremendous help to me. She has couponing down to a science. Here is a link that you can go to and check it out.
Happy Couponing. :)
Blessings,
Carol
I used a lot of the same ideas as Crystal. However, recently, I began using the Blessed Coupon Redeemer service on the internet. As the homeschooling mom of 4 children, the time I save from scanning the ads and matching up the coupons is well worth the $10 monthly fee. I get coupon lists for 5 stores in my area for the fee, so that is only $2 per store per month. And that amount is easily covered by the savings. To extend my savings, I buy four newspapers every week. With the help of the Blessed Coupon Redeemer site, I typically pay 15% - 20% of the retail value. This allows our family to stock the local food bank shelves, send care packages with missionaries, and reach out to families in our neighborhood struggling to make ends meet. The education my children get from participating in this family project is invaluable.
Tina
Crystal,
You said the magic word: Aldis!
I loved that store when we lived up north. Like you, Aldis was a blessing that allowed us to eat well on an incredibly small amount. The thankful lady behind me reminded me of this once while I was grumbling about the long lines, and I never forgot the lesson.
Tina, I can't find Blessed Coupon Redeemer anywhere online. Can you point me in the right direction?
Being in stationed in Germany, the commissary here (military term for grocery store)allows us to use coupons that have been expired for 6 months. So, say a coupon expired April 1st, I would be able to use a coupon from October 1st 2005. So, if any of you have coupons that you don't want, let me know, I will take them off your hands!
biblegirl1999@yahoo.com
We have an Aldi's here in Germany, in fact I practically live nezt door. They sell German chocolate dirt cheap..LOL. They sell other products too but since it's all in German, and I am not fluent in that yet, I don't buy anything there...yet. :-)
I use thegrocerygame.com too. It does essentially the same thing you do, Crystal, except it does it FOR me, and it tracks sales cycles and rock-bottom deals as well. Sometimes a sale isn't really all that great of a sale, and the GG keeps track of that so that I don't waste my coupon on a "phantom" sale. I also don't have to go to several different stores (although in some markets there are 2-3 stores involved in the GG).
We don't have an Aldi, so regular grocery stores and Costco are our only choices. I used to do most of my shopping at Costco because the price per unit was cheaper. But now that I do the GG, I usually buy things at the grocery store because the PPU is cheaper there. I also can buy brand name items for cheaper than generic the vast majority of the time.
The coupons in our local paper are AWFUL (even though it's the largest paper in the area), but my mom sends me coupons from her paper, which are much better. That helps a LOT.
I've been able to reduce our average monthly food bill by about $150 by using the GG.
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