Saving in the New Year: Getting Started With Coupons

As the New Year approaches, I've heard many folks say that saving is one of their top resolutions. Couponing is one way to save your family some cold, hard cash. You would be amazed at what some planning and coupon inserts can do to change your life. To give you some inspiration and get you pointed in the right direction, I've rounded up some of my posts from way back on how to get started clipping your way to savings. It is something I intend to embrace at full force once again in 2017. Good luck and happy shopping!

How Do You Save That Much?

I Don't Know Where To Start!

Know When To Hold 'Em, Know When To Shop

Small Town Savings

Image by J. Stephen Conn via Flickr

I've written before about struggling to stay frugal after moving here to Podunk. With no CVS, no Walmart, Kroger, and no double coupons...well it has been hard to adjust. Amy, from Amy Loves It wrote a great guest post at Keeping the Kingdom First about how to save money while living in a small town. It's full of great tips for all of us who have the choice of a dollar store or the one grocery store in town. Go check it out!

I Just Don't Get It ~ IP Coupons

We have one grocery store here in Podunk, a Brookshire's. This store has doubled/tripled coupons a total of four times in the almost year we have lived here. This has severely messed up my couponing. I either have to drive 30 miles to another store in a different town, or deal with the slim pickings offered here.

Today the new sales ad came in the mail. It was promoting the awesome Kraft coupons currently being offered. I went to the Brookshire's site to investigate further, then wound up on the Kraft page. I do not understand why Brookshire's is promoting these coupons when the local store will not take IP coupons. It makes no sense at all! So, I emailed them and asked if the local store's policy had changed. I am eager to hear back from them.

I went ahead and printed the coupons. I can always make Dan stop and Walmart and use them before he comes home from work one day. I love bargains and these are great coupons! I urge you to go check them out.

Stephenville Shopping Trip ~ HEB and Piggly Wiggly GDA

Boy did we stumble upon a great deal in Stephenville today! The Piggly Wiggly there had whole pork loin on sale for $1.59/lb. We bought one and had the butcher cut it into 1/2 inch thick chops. We got 35 chops at a cost of .44 each. I was thrilled! I also picked up a very lovely 12lb. ham for $10. It felt great to be able to do a little stocking up in the meat department, since this is where most of our grocery money goes to.

I also picked up some Ken's Steakhouse Salad dressing for .99 a bottle and the Ken's brand spray on Lite Accents dressing for .39 a bottle at HEB. Not bad! I love coupons!

What are some great deals you've found recently?


SAVING is good.

Reader Comment - How do you save that much?

This was a recent question in a reader comment. I want to start by saying that getting to the point of seeing big savings on groceries did not happen over night. It was a slow process. I have found that getting HBA items for free or close to it is much easier than saving on food. Saving on your grocery budget takes a little more work, but it is worth it.

This is how I started seeing big savings at the grocery store.

1. I got all my coupons really well organized and took my coupon binder with me into every store. I am good about making lists and sticking to them, but you never know when you will find a super deal. I often find close out or unadvertised sales, that make for free or very inexpensive items when combined with a coupon.

2. I do most of my shopping at a grocery store that doubles and triples coupons. This helps keep my grocery spending low.

3. If it's not on sale, I don't buy it. I do not pay full price for much of anything anymore. The few exceptions I can think of are milk and produce. I've always been a frugal shopper, but now I've taken it to the extreme. In fact there are somethings I refuse to pay for at all anymore, because I know they will eventually be free after coupon during a sale if I just have patience. Examples of this are BBQ sauce and lots of HBA stuff like deodorant, toothpaste, and razors.

4. Stockpile! I do not hesitate to really stock up on good deals. My HBA stockpile is always in better shape than my food stockpile, but that is just how the deals seem to go lately. My last great food stockpile deal was pot roast at less than $1 a pound. I filled half my freezer! I try to stock up on the things my family eats the most, but will bulk purchase all sorts of foods when the are free/almost free. Having a well supplied stockpile will really help with your food costs as you won't need to buy as much.

This is how I save so much on groceries. Sometimes the sales aren't great for awhile and we eat out of the pantry a lot. But, using coupons has helped us over come the "feast or famine" lifestyle we once had. It takes awhile to get the hang of it and to build up a healthy stockpile, but it is very much worth the effort. If you have any questions, please email or comment and I'll do my best to be helpful.

Happy Saving!

"Coupons Are Too Much Trouble"

This is what the young woman behind me at Kroger told me today. I smiled back and asked why she thought so. We had a nice little chat while waiting in line. She kept going on and on about how it took loads of time to clip coupons, file them in those little accordion file thingies, then there was remembering you even had them at all, and if you did you probably only actually saved a few cents. Her opinion was that they were just not worth the hassle. Now, I am always sharing my enthusiasm for coupon shopping with others, so I showed her the Couponizer I had with me and how easy it was to use. I also explained that I was skeptical at first, but did really well with my couponing now. It was obvious she doubted me. Then I paid slightly less than $15 for $81.33 in groceries. She asked me to wait while she checked out so she could get my email info and asked if I'd help her get started with coupons. Yes! I love helping people learn to save money. With the rising cost of everything these days, I like to think I am am helping people stretch their budgets. I know if I had not picked up my couponing habit that our family would be struggling to eat well right now. So, for us, coupons are not too much trouble. Coupons are a blessing!

My .49 Kroger Shopping Spree!

So, I hit the fantastic sale at Kroger today and did awesome! My total was originally -.60, so I grabbed a couple of candy bars and ended up paying .49! My total savings was $59.45 or 99%! Here's what I got!

2 - 4 rolls pkg. Cottonelle
2- 4lb. bags Domino sugar
1- Betty Crocker boxed blueberry muffin mix
6 tubes Grands biscuits
3 tubes cinnamon rolls
3 tubes crescent rolls
1 Pilsbury pizza crust tube
1 box Hungry Jack instant potatoes
1 Excedrin tube
4 bottles SoBe Life Water
1 box NY Texas Toast
4 Lipton Noodle Side Dishes
3 bottles French's yellow mustard
2 bottles French's spicy brown mustard
1 Temptations cat treats
2 Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

I was quite pleased! And the best part is, I was told this is a TWO WEEK sale! I can't wait to get some more great deals! I just had to share. Kroger is most definitely worth shopping this week!

Coupons: I don't know where to start!

Dear Nessa,
I've told you before that I really want to start bargain shopping and using coupons, but don't know where to start. Can you please email me some pointers on how to use coupons to get the best deals? I do not understand how you get all this stuff for a fraction of the cost with one Sunday newspaper! Help me!
Take Care,
K.

Well, I guess now is the time to cover coupon usage in my blog. :-) If you have any questions I have not answered please email me, I'll be happy to help!

First of all, I do not get awesome deals with just one newspaper's worth of inserts. My advice to the newbie couponer is to get every coupon insert you possible can. Let family, friends, and coworkers know that you'd love to have the inserts out of their Sunday papers if they are just going to toss them. I have several family members who save these for me. Multiples of the same coupons can be a blessing, believe me! My first really good deal was thanks to having multiples. All laundry detergent was on sale 3/$5 or roughly $1.67 each, which in my old way of thinking was a pretty good deal, but I had coupons for .50 off which doubled making each bottle .67 each. I luckily had multiples of the coupon and did not run out of laundry detergent for over six months. So, collect those coupon inserts, they will come in handy!

Another important first step is to figure out the best places to shop. I had always been a Walmart shopper and just knew it was the cheapest place in town to shop. Wrong! Since switching to Kroger and CVS, I've cut our grocery budget in half! So, call all your local stores and ask what their coupon policy is. You may be surprised at what you learn! Ask if they double/triple, how many "like" coupons they will double/triple, if they accept internet printed coupons, if they accept competitors coupons, and if the take expired coupons (you read that right, some stores do this!). You will probably want to call the store itself rather than it's customer service line. Kroger's customer service emailed me their coupon policy and it states very clearly that they do not accept internet printed coupons, yet I know that Kroger stores in the DFW area will. So, get copies in writing if at all possible. Get as much information as you can; you want to get the best deals, but want know what you can and cannot do at each store.
***This seems like a good place to add this thought; go here and print out Walmart's coupon policy, then keep it on you at all times. I have been challenged over my coupon use at Walmart and nowhere else. I get the impression that employees there have very minimal coupon training. Keeping the policy with you, so it can be brought out and consulted in front of cashiers, seems to considerably cut down on problems. If you get copies of any stores' coupon policies, I really recommend keeping them in your coupon organize, should questions ever arise in the store. :-)

When I first started using coupons, I would not even bother cutting some of them out, thinking "we never use so and so". Cut out everything! You may think Brand X salad dressing is to expensive, even with a $1 off coupon, but when it goes on sale 10/$10 you'll wish you hadn't tossed that coupon. This has happened to me more times than I care to remember. And even if it is for something you will truly never use, you may be able to pick it up for just pennies or free and bless someone else with it. So, cut all the coupons out, the worst you are out is a little time and the effort may pay off!

I get a lot of free things that I bless others with. I am for the first time in our lives able to donate to the food pantry and women's shelter. School food drives get good donations from us now; in the past I would scrounge some interesting things form the back of our pantry. HBA we will not use go to the shelters or in care packages for our troops. It is awesome that by saving our family money, I am able to bless others as well!

The next step is to get organized. When I first started I was using one of those small accordion style, pre-labeled coupon clutches. One good Sunday with multiple inserts and I found that was just not going to work. I went through several organizational methods until I found the one I like, my binder. The trick here is to find what works for you and everyone is different. There is a lot of information to found online about this. I have been using the binder method for awhile now, but honestly haven't found a way of organizing it that suits me. I tried reorganizing yesterday, I am hoping I've finally got it right! But, as I said what works for me may not work for me, and vice versa. Some options to use are a binder, an index card box, a hinged plastic shoe box, I know of one woman that uses a briefcase, or you can buy several premade coupon organizers online. You may have to try several things before you find the one for you.

This is a work in progress. In the next portion of this article, we'll cover how to actually start using the coupons you've so careful collected and organized. Until then, comment or email me if you have any question. Also, if there is anything specific you'd like me to cover as far as coupons go, please feel free to ask.

Taking stock of my stockpile

I was doing some spring cleaning today and thought it would be a good time to really dig into my stockpile to see where I stand. The only thing I have added to our stockpile of nongrocery items since moving into this house at Christmas has been hand soap. Thanks to Kroger, Dial, and Softsoap I think we are set there for quite awhile. so, I wanted to see what I was running low on. The results mad me sad.

For the first time in about 8 months, I am going to need to buy laundry detergent soon. I hope I can hold out until a good deal comes along. I planned to get some at CVS last week, but my store didn't even carry the kind on sale.

I need to find a fantastic deal on toliet paper FAST! I wish I could find the free toliet paper deals some of you do. But, hopefully I'll find a decent deal soon.

Dan's supply of razors needs replinishing. He can only use a select few because of his highly sensitive skin. I so wish he could use anything, CVS has been paying me to cart those off lately. Those I have stashed back for soldier care packages, so they don't go to waste.

Finding a good deal on most of the paper and plastic products we use would be nice too. We aren't in desperate shape yet, but I'd like to not run out.

For those of you who have been couponing and stockpiling awhile, do you get anxious when your stock runs low? I get an uneasy feeling. This is the first time since altering the way I shop that things have come close to running out. It's been a learning experience; I have let a few nice deals pass me by because we didn't need something at the time. So, I've had my eyes opened and know God will provide another opportunity.

The good news is that we will not need shampoo, bodywash, deodorant, toothpaste, or face wash for awhile.

As for my grocery stockpile, there isn't much of fun. I am still trying to get back on track in that area. I know I will get there, it just takes time.