Couponing

I recently attended a class on how to save money on groceries and household products. I thought I knew a lot, but let me tell you, there is always room to learn some more! Andrea Charles, of A Smart Shopper, was the speaker and she brought a slide show. It contained pictures of her "storeroom", info about coupons, and lots of information about drug store savings. I highly recommend visiting her site, because we could have spent an entire day going into more detail than she had time to tell us. A few important things that I learned:
1. Buy on sale
2. Use coupons
3. Use store promotions
4. Shop drugstores

Also: Kroger will double a coupon up to .50 cents. They also do not provide rain checks for items on sale that are not itemized in their weekly ad. Wal-Mart will give the same deal on their store brand that another store offers (Kroger soup = Wal-Mart soup) along with matching prices on name brand items.

Be proactive - you will save money if you stock up when things are on sale. though I didn't have a coupon for it, recently during the mega sale at Kroger I found organic cold cereal for .99 a box. I bought 16. Yes, we feel a bit run over by cereal at the moment, but I don't have to worry about breakfast for a few months. Also we found coupons for pasta ($1 off 2 boxes) and the pasta was on sale for .49 each. You just can't beat FREE!

Coupons CAN work in your favor. Here is an example:

Jiff Peanut butter regular price $2.99
On sale for $1.49
Coupon .35 cents off/doubled $.70
---------------------------------------
Final cost to you: $.79

Yeah, its addictive!

Always get the coupons in the Sunday paper*. If you know someone who takes the paper, ask for their coupon inserts. If necessary buy a copy or two for yourself. I have started purchasing them, taking out the coupons, and offering the paper for free to other shoppers. Cut them all out, because if you catch a sale, have a store coupon, a manufacturers coupon, or possibly both (yes you can use one of each on a purchase for more savings) then name brand shampoo might be cheaper than your usual brand.
*There are no coupons on holiday weekends.

Every month there is a magazine called All You. You can only purchase it at Wal-mart and it has a LOT of coupons in it. On the cover it will give the total coupon savings for that month. Its worth the money.


Now what to do with all these coupons? Andrea has hers in a small-ish note card box, separated by type of item (dairy, meat, condiments, etc) and keeps the ones with the closest expiration dates in the front of each category. After checking her pantry, the sales flyers to see what is out there, and her coupons, she makes a grocery list, pulling the coupons and putting them in a section at the front of the box titled "Use today" or Use at Wal-Mart", etc. She also uses websites that track the coupons (when they came out, what weeks insert had the coupons, etc). Really, go read her site! Its amazing.

In the meantime, the garden is growing. I looked out the window the other day and there was a big, fat groundhog in my yard! So, I did a quick search & found out they dislike peppermint intensely. I don't have peppermint but I did happen to have a bunch of spearmint that my Mom had pulled. So I laid it around the bag garden to ward off the critter. So far it seems to be working. We will see...

All this plus customer quilts! Life is good, even tho it is a bit uncertain right now.