The backstory of my journey into couponing...
When Josh and I were first married almost four years ago, we became very interested in couponing. As a bachelor Josh had lived on instant mashed potatoes, frozen pizzas, and ramen noodles if he ate at home but mostly ate out. During my college stint I lived on soup and eating out with Josh and when I quit living in the dorms I lived at home where food was readily available. SO, coming into our marriage, Josh and I were a little clueless about menu planning and grocery shopping. If I remember correctly, our first grocery shopping trip was around $300. Some of that included buying spices and oils for the first time, but mostly it was just walking down the aisles and throwing things into the cart like rich people who had no regard for money (we were NOT rich). We were shocked by the price of groceries and how our bill was consistently high. After a few months, we decided to start doing some couponing and were able to clip a few here and there and save a few dollars.
I quit working in my third trimester when I was pregnant with our oldest and although we had always made our financial decisions based on having one income, we were still used to the excess money my pay checks brought in. So, when I quit I spent a lot of time studying our bills, making and constantly revising budgets and searching for ways to save money. And then I got more into making coupons work for me. I found an old notebook, stole Josh's baseball card holders and set to work making an organized system to access coupons. And when I say organized, I mean organized. I'm the daughter of a man who loves spreadsheets and I channeled him when it came to making a spreadsheet for the notebook of every coupon it contained. It was serious business.
But with all my efforts, I found myself able to save about $10-15 a grocery trip which was a huge success to me and worth my work. Then someone told me Target puts coupons online and you can combine them with manufactour coupons and that saved me even more. And then TLC released a little show about couponing that blew up and made everyone interested which helped me because I learned more about websites that help you find the best deals. For me, Consumer Queen (more geared to Oklahoma couponers) became a place I went regularly and before I knew it I was getting 6 boxes of whole wheat Ronzoni pasta for free and boxes of Pop Tarts for $.50.
Couponing changed for me with kids. J was around and about 8 months when I discovered Consumer Queen and with the help of Josh watching him, I managed to do a lot of good work and save us a lot of money ($10-$15 at Target and up to 90% on various items at Homeland). The one thing the TLC coupon show made me believe is that it was possible to get all my groceries free. I did a little research and no stores in Oklahoma let you triple coupons nor do they double more than one of the same coupon in that shopping trip. There also is no store that lets you apply extra savings from coupons outside of the price of the item toward the total bill. If you item is $1 and the coupon is for $2 you don't get an extra magical dollar towards your meat. I could never have completely free groceries because we could never live on pasta, pop tarts, cereal, salsa, or V8 (among other things).
Our family spends around $40 a week on produce because it's important to us to eat a lot of veggies and fruits. We also spend about $40 a week on meat. I knew for the 4 of us I wanted a target weekly grocery budget of $100 which would give us $200 a check for food and I built $50 reserve for milk and fill in groceries (because we buy our milk locally at a store called Braums and we're always running out of bananas). That leaves $20 for a lot of things (and I usually go over now that I have an 8 month old and a 22 month old - it can just be really hard to find time to coupon let alone to go to the grocery store and be organized).
So that's the background with me and couponing and my warning. This isn't a post that will tell you how to get groceries for free and work the system. It's just a post about how I do my best to save the most money I can and how that can be done in a realistic way for me. I have about one hour a week I can clip, file, and organize my coupons. I'm trying now to carve out another hour to get back on Consumer Queen's site to find ways to save more and get more freebies and low price items at Homeland (except Pop Tarts... I went crazy with those and I'm not pregnant anymore so they aren't easily justified!). So without further ado...
Tips for saving when you can't use a coupon...
MEAT
Meat is expensive. We prefer to buy organic meat but if we can't be buy all natural. There's nothing wrong with normal meat and we've bought our share of it, and the honest truth is that while I do care about the organic label because it makes me feel good about myself, I mostly just think an organic cut of meat from the butcher produces a lot better flavor and a more moist roast or chicken breast or whatever.
Chicken
A Whole Foods recently opened somewhat close to where we live and we're obsessed with the butcher there. But it's expensive. Organic chicken breast is $6.99 a pound and I used 3-4lbs of chicken breast in my cooking every two weeks. So, to save money I started buying a whole rotiserie chicken while we're at Whole Foods. They're $8.99 and delicious. The chicken becomes our dinner that night and then that night I debone it and pack up the shredded meat which is enough for two casseroles and boil the bones with veggies for a ton of stock. I know I'll still need raw chicken for simple baked meals (like my parm ranch chicken) so I go to Target and buy a pound or two of their all natural chicken for $4.99 a pound. I found that Sunflower Market sells all natural chicken for $1.99 a pound if you buy in bulk (which I'm all about) but every time I've bought that chicken I've felt like the flavor is off. I've also found the bag is really slimy and that freaks me out. So that's chicken.
Sales
The BEST advice I can give a person looking to save money on meat is to shop sales. Whole Foods has amazing meat sales every few months. Earlier this year they sold whole chickens for $.99 a pound. $.99!!! For an organic whole chicken! I KICK myself all the time for not buying 10 to freeze. Recently, Whole Foods also sold pre-made, low fat hamburger patties for $.99 a pound. Again, organic for $.99!!! Amazing. Things like that are great because they're formed to patties but they're still ground beef so you could throw them in your pan, break it up and make tacos. If you happen upon a sale with meat for a steal of a price, stock up and freeze. It's good for 3 months, so don't go too crazy, but just assess what you'd use in 3 months and then buy! I also buy a lot of pork roasts for pork carnitas and pulled pork and Whole Foods will put theirs on sale from $5.99/lb to $1.99/lb occassionally and when they do I buy several pounds and have the butcher wrap them sepearately so I can just throw them in the freezer.
PRODUCE
Produce isn't so simple as "buy cheap and freeze!" because it's fresh and doesn't last. I'm also less picky about organic produce. Bananas, for example, are fine in any state to me. Target usually has bananas for around $.60/lb. We eat at least 12 bananas a week here so when I go to the store I buy two big groups - one yellow w/ no brown and one a little greener. That lasts us a week. I like to buy organic berries, but ONLY if their on sale. Berries are a treat here. Grapes are about $1.50/lb now at Whole Foods or Target and we LOVE grapes. I always buy a big bag and it'll last us a week. At this time of year I also like to buy one melon - cantaloupe or watermelon. I'll usually buy whatever is cheaper based on how ambitious I feel (because cutting a watermelon is an undertaking). I then always buy carrots, green beans, an onion, a clove of garlic & broccoli. These are just staples for us. I also love avocado and went on a huge avocado bender lately. Once I bought 6 for 1 week. At $.99 per that was a little nuts. Now I search for the best price on avocados in the ads, decide ahead of time if we'll make guac and limit myself to 1 or 2 avocados a week (so I end up buying 3-4 a week at around $.69/per).
The best advice I can give for saving money on produce is to "break it down" when you get home. Some produce isn't supposed to be washed until right before you eat it but that doesn't mean you can't get it as close to ready as possible. I pluck all my grapes off the vine and put them in tupperwear so they're ready to wash and go. I also cute lettuce or celery or melons -- anything that needs to be cut and is challenging. These things are also great to do when Josh is home or else I might not get it done with two little ones under my feet! Then I store these in tupperwear as well. This makes it just as easy to give my kids grapes or melon as it is to give them a bag of goldfish. Likewise, it makes it easier for me to choose fruits and veggies over quick, unhealthy, fattening snacks (and my weigh ins always go better the weeks we're stocked in fruit!). I find that if I don't break down my fruit or veggies I may forget about them or I won't want to take the time for them later on and they'll spoil and it'll be a waste.
Which brings us to...
My advice regarding coupons...
First things first! Go through your ads and clip like a mad woman. This takes the longest amount of time for me and I tend to do it either on a night Josh goes to bed earlier or while we're watching something on TV I'm semi-interested in but not all about. I used to leave things behind but now I try to catch everything because sometimes things that I wouldn't normally buy are free at a local grocer with their doubling the coupon. If I don't have time to clip it all, I tuck my ad pages into the notebooks pockets when I'm done in case I need something later. Then I just throw all the coupons in a pile.
My notebook & my pile... not too fancy (and the bad lighting from my dining room light in the late night hours)!
Within my notebook there are dividers. My sections are:
Baby
Hygene
Wellness
Dry
Cold
Liquid
Toiletries
Organizing
Cleaning
Misc
Within those divider categories I like to try to be even more organized if possible. I keep all the deoderant coupons in the same page of hygene and keep the toothpaste together, etc.
So, keeping my sections in mind, I stack the coupons by category into new piles and then sort them for the pages. The baby stuff actually stays in front of a folder because it's the most accessed (I hate paying more than $.25/per diaper). It usually looks something like this.
This is the "shaving" section...
Toiletries...
Organizing...
And that's how I organize the notebook!
But I think there's more to saving than clipping coupons. Especially for me. If I go to the store without a list I not only forget tons of things, I also spend way too much money. So, at least twice a month (usually a few days before pay day) I sit down to make a menu and then fill my lists with what I need to cook as well as what else we need. My menu planning usually means consulting Pinterest. I like to try new things a few times a month and it's also a good way to find some of our new favorites I haven't memorized yet.
I sometimes go to three stores, but if I can't I just go to Target because I can get the best deals on everything in one place there. I also hate buying things aside from meat/produce at Whole Foods and hate buying produce at Crest. I separate my list into the stores I need to go and what I'll need from each store. If I end up just at Target, it's all still together, but if I manage to go to each store, I have it all there isolated.
So that's my story. That's how I save money on groceries. I have to stay organized in my menu planning and list making, my coupon clipping and organizing, and I have to stay commited to checking what's on sale. Saving money takes work. To be truly successful and save us at least $50 a month I'm likely to put 3-4 hours of work into all of this each month (not including shopping). All in all, that's not so bad, right? If I were paid by the hour it'd be above minimum wage and when I save even more it's an even better value! Saving is important to us and so is staying on budget. Hopefully if you're looking to save on groceries, these ideas or tips will help you too!
Oh, and one more note, I also have a Target Red card. Not the credit card kind, just the debit kind so it comes out of my checking account. I LOVE it. I save 5% but that adds up. Especially on diapers. The other day I shopped for 2 weeks because I was doing make ahead meals. My total at check out was $230 but after my coupons and Red car savings I was down to just over $200.
And also, do you have any tips? I've done this for 3 years or so now, but I've learned slowly and I feel like there is so much more to learn! I'd love to devote more time to couponing and save even more money, but with everything else there is to do, I'm thankful to be able to save a little.
