Trolling the Aisles of Your Super Market

Maybe coupon shopping just isn't your bag.  Maybe you hate even the idea of paging through the newspaper ads and cutting out coupons, or worse yet, printing out coupons online and using your valuable paper and ink!  If this is you, here is an easy way to still pick up some great deals at your grocery store without the scissors or newsprint stained fingers.

Each week during your weekly shopping trip, take an extra 10 minutes and slowly walk down a couple of aisles looking for those lovely $1.00 sale tags -- or 2/$1.00 is even better!  My personal favorites to comb on a regular basis are the personal hygiene and cleaning supplies aisles. You'll be amazed at often your favorite deodorant, toothpaste or window cleaning spray are on sale for only $1.00 (which is typically much less than half the regular price).

If I didn't walk down these aisle WHEN I DON'T NEED these items, I would end up paying full price just a few weeks later -- when I'm desperate.   We've all been there before!

My second little piece of advice is to buy 12 of these items when they are on sale for $1.00.  Instantly you have a year's supply of this product.  Easy Peasy.

Remember, the most expensive item is the one you HAVE to buy right now.  I think it's a cosmic law that nothing is ever on sale at that moment.

Free on Your Birthday (Janssen)

Last week was my birthday. And so, in honor of my big day, we did what I like most - got things for free.

I was inspired by my friend Erin's post about the free birthday food tour of Ann Arbor. The fact that I do not live anywhere near Ann Arbor did not deter me - I would find free food in my city.

And oh, did I ever.

On my birthday, I stopped at Schlotzsky's for my free small sandwich, then drove through Sonic for my free creamslush (delicious). I picked up Bart from work and we went to Firehouse Subs where you can get a free medium sandwich on your birthday if you have ID that verifies that it is indeed your birthday. We split the two sandwiches and the slush and went on our merry, none-the-poorer way. Happy birthday indeed (also, neither of us had ever been to Firehouse before and WOW, it was delicious).

After Bart was done at work, we went to Benihana for dinner because they send a free entree/$30 gift certificate for your birthday. We got the largest sushi combo on the menu that was under $30 and it fed us both - no cost except a nice tip.

I still have my coupons (that are good for another week or so) for a free cone at Maggie Moo's, a free Blizzard at Dairy Queen, free ice cream from Baskin Robbins, a free entree at Kona Grill, a free burger at Fuddruckers, and a free burger at Red Robin.

I also got a coupon for a free ice cream at Cold Stone but tragically all the Cold Stones in the Austin area have closed. The nearest one is some 80 miles away and even I am not dumb enough to drive that far for a free ice cream cone.

If that isn't ENOUGH free stuff for you, here's even more comprehensive lists of places that offer a birthday treat of some sort: Birthday Freebies, Hey It's Free!, and Happy Birthday Deals.

I can't wait for Bart's birthday in the spring. . .

Time Well Spent (Carole)

We've all heard the saying, "Time is Money."  When it comes to saving money, nothing could be more true.  This is just a short little post to remind you that -

the faster you're living your life, the more money you're probably spending

Because it takes some time to:
 *  Write up a budget
 *  Plan a menu
 *  Cook your own  meals
 *  Look for and use coupons
 *  Become familiar with the usual prices of things
*   Comparison shop
*   Do your homework on the best brands
*   Shop at more than one grocery store
*   Try a DIY project
*   Home repairs

Are you living your life too fast to be frugal??

It's difficult to remove yourself from the frenzied pace of modern life.  But try to slow it down, think things through, consider your options before you buy something, take a few deep breaths and spend your hard-earned money wisely.  Your savings can be enormous.


Photo courtesy of FreeFoto.com  

Grocery Shopping (Janssen)

About a year ago, I wrote about grocery shopping on my personal blog and a bunch of people commented saying things like, "Um, you guys must not eat anything." I don't really know what to say to that - I feel like we eat a pretty normal amount. We have a full dinner nearly every night, we have people over for dinner, and we pack a lunch every day. I cook a lot. We eat primarily healthy food.

All of which is to say, you may read this post and think, "You only buy two items a week. No wonder your budget is low." And if you think that, I simply don't have an explanation.

Anyway . . . .

When I go grocery shopping, I make a list that looks like this (it's the same one my mom has done my whole life):

I star things I have coupons for and write the brand after it if it matters and if I'm going to two grocery stores, I write down what store I'll be buying things at. Very high-tech.

And then I just do not buy things that are not on my list. Period.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough how important it is to get to know your store (or stores). Ask friends or neighbors about any money savings tips they know - two of my favorite money-saving tips came from people I know.

One of my friends mentioned that if you used the self-scanner (a little hand held scanner that you can use to ring up your groceries as you go (I love this thing because I know my exact total before I even get to the checkout lane)), you got extra discounts that showed up only on the scanner (I also found out later that they are tailored to the things you buy, so I often am able to use those discounts).

My co-worker also told me about the reduced produce shelf and where to find it in the grocery store. I owe my $1.29 and delicious pineapple this past week to her. Not to mention all the times I've bought other ludicrously inexpensive produce from this cart. I do many of my side dishes this way - I just anticipate buying at least one or two items that I'll use from there.

Melanie asked about using coupons and how she's found them fairly unhelpful so far. Personally, I do not use a lot of coupons. I don't take the newspaper, but I  religiously check coupons.com and am able to make that work pretty well. I scan through it every few days and see if there is anything I'm interested in. The main ones I use are for meat (chicken sausage, pepperoni, etc), cheese, sour cream, yogurt, cold cereal, chocolate chips, diapers, and sugar.

Once I found out that my store doubles any coupon under a dollar automatically, I had a better feel for how coupons could save me some substantial money. I also watch for sales to correspond with my coupons. If cereal goes on sale and I have coupons for it, I'm suddenly paying less than half than I'd pay for a smaller box of the generic brand. That's hard to beat.

Here's a picture of my receipt from this past week - the only thing that's not listed on here that I bought in this is the gallon of milk I bought at BJ's (the east coast equivalent of Cosco) and the additional boxes of cereal I bought a few days later:

I got a discount on my chicken and cream cheese (thanks to the scanner), I had a dollar off coupon for being willing to do a blind taste test of fudgesicles (would YOU have said no?), my reusable bag coupons, a diaper coupon, coupons that doubled for chex mix (a little gift for Bart) and my four boxes of cereal and $1 coupons for both of my yogurt packs.

This was, of course, a particularly good week for me - I'm not usually saving more than 50% on my groceries. But this week chicken was on sale for $1.79 a pound (Sherry informs me that is not a sale, but, let me tell you, in Massachusetts, that is a freaking STEAL. I have never once seen it go that low in the year we've lived here), plus my scanner gave me an extra 10% off. Cereal was also on sale for $1.50 a box and with the coupons I'd printed off a few weeks earlier and was just holding on to, I got those boxes of cereal for 40 cents each.

This coming week, I know that the yogurt I like most is going on sale and so I'll buy more than I usually do (and I've been hoarding coupons for this product for several weeks anyway). When one of my stores sent out $1 doubler coupons a few weeks ago, I bought four boxes of it (each of which have 4 yogurt cups).

At the end of the day, my main strategy is to just not buy things I don't need and to take advantage of sales, coupons, and discounts whenever I can.

Other grocery shopping secrets?

Keeping Groceries from Eating Your Budget (Janssen)

There are some categories in your budget that you could cut out (you could live without a cell phone or without the Internet or without any entertainment category or go without buying new clothing for a year), but groceries, unfortunately, is not one of those categories, at least not in my experience.

And so, because I don't want lots and lots of my money going to groceries, I put forth a fair amount of effort to keeping my costs low. Our budget for groceries is $200 a month (just around $50 a week).

• I grocery shop every single week. I know some people (like Merrick) do two week trips, but that has not worked for me. It is easier and less stressful for me to go every week and know that if I can't afford something one week, it's only one week until I go again. Also, then I can get through my produce without throwing it away or running out of stuff too early. Figure out what works for you and then stick to it.
• Find out what kind of deals your grocery store offers. Shortly after we moved to Massachusetts, I started doing some reading about couponing and store specials and I was so sad not to live in Utah or other states where I was reading about these amazing deals or programs my stores didn't run. But over the last eight months, I've made a real effort to figure out what my store policies are and now I feel like I'm getting some good deals. I know that they double all coupons under $1.00. I know that there is a reduced produce section (a huge tray of various slightly bruised or very ripe produce for $1.29) back by the deli. I know that if something rings up for the wrong price, I get it free (if I ask). I keep learning ways to save at my grocery store that I was missing before.
• I am militant about that budget. If we run out of something, that's too. dang. bad. Bart can live for three days without eggs. I can do waffles for dinner if I suddenly realize my spinach for my quiche has gone bad. No syrup? Put some jam or applesauce or powdered sugar on your pancakes. Running out of something is not a reason to go to the grocery store. I make one midweek trip to the grocery store for bananas but I do not buy anything else. Nothing.
• Read your store circulars. I get the circulars for three different grocery stores, all of which are within about two miles of my house. I have one store that I generally shop at, one that I NEVER go to, and one that I go to on occasion if they have enough good items or coupons to make it worth my while. Use this to plan your menu.
• Make a menu. I cannot say this with enough emphasis. If you are not planning out what you'll be eating every night, you are very likely going to have a hard time sticking to a grocery budget. I make my menu in Google Docs so that I can access it from anywhere, so that it's on file for me, so that I can share it with Bart if he wants to know what I'm making for dinner, and so that I can copy it every week and copy the things I didn't make (I almost ALWAYS end up with one meal I didn't actually make because we had leftovers or decided to have waffles instead or Bart had a work dinner or something).

Next week I'll talk in more detail about how I make my menu and what my grocery shopping trips look like (complete with coupons). What do you do to keep your grocery costs low?

Easy Coupon-ing (Carole)

I've meant to share this easy way to coupon for quite awhile, but somehow other topics kept stealing my attention.  So here we go!

There are some wonderful websites out there that bring the world of coupons right to your door.  These are not crazy buy-coupons-on-Ebay sites.  (And isn't that illegal anyway??)  These are websites that keep track of what coupons are showing up in your mailbox and in your local Sunday newspaper and telling you when to use them at your local grocery stores for maximum savings.

Bless the men and women who scour the sale fliers and match up the weekly specials with your saved coupons.

I learned this easy system from my good friend Johanna.  She's a genius.

She suggests, to get the most bang for your buck:
1.  Sign up for as many local Sunday newspapers as there are people living in your home.  Remove from each paper the Super Shopper  (SS) ad section.  Write on the front of each SS the date with a large marker.  File these by month (June altogether, July altogether. . .)

2.  Remove the Red Plum (RP) ads that come in your mailbox usually on Tuesday.  Also mark these with the date with a large marker and file them with the SSs.  You can use a file drawer with hanging folders, or any other method that works easily for you that separates these 2 kinds of fliers by month.

Now just ignore all these collected fliers, until the website tells you to go find one of them.  They may sit filed away and un-used for a few weeks.

Now comes the fun part.

Go to the website The Obsessive Shopper.   Wednesday is the best day, because that's when the new deals come out for grocery stores.  This site is set up for Arizona, Idaho, Eastern Washington state, Las Vegas, Northern & Southern California and Utah stores.  The stores listed are the major grocery stores in those areas.  There is a National section too, for those of you who do not live in the above mentioned areas, but it only lists coupons and sales at Wal-Mart.  Not terrible, but not great.  So sorry.  I bet there are other websites out there for your corner of the globe that do this same thing, and you and I can continue trying to find them!!  Let us know if you locate such a site and we'll spread the word.

Now back to The Obsessive Shopper.

1.  Click on your location
2.  From the "Select Your Store" drop down menu, pick a store.
3.  Always begin by selecting the "Start" button at the top.
             *This will shade all the rows in the list gray; any rows shaded gray will NOT print.
4.  To automatically select only 4&5 star items (the best "stock up" items) click on the red star in the top left corner of the list.  This will pre-select all 4&5 star items, turning their rows white
            *When you find an item you want to put on your list, click directly on the row and the shading will return back to white.  All white rows WILL print.
5.  Be sure to click on the top row (where all the descriptions are) so it turns white and also prints (including any other row that includes specific information about a promo).
6.  When you are done, click on the "Shrink" button at the top of the screen.  This will "hide" any gray rows from your printer.  If you want to go back to the complete list, click "Un-Shrink" to have all rows return.
7.  When you are done, click "Print Now" at the top of the screen.
8.  After you print your list, go back and link to all your printable coupons to print (usually you can only print 2 copies of printable coupons from any one computer -- but if you have more than one computer in your house, you can print 2 from each computer)
9.  Now, looking at your printed list, go to your filed-away fliers and clip the suggested coupons (SS = Smart Shopper & RP = Red Plum) by the dates listed.

Most items in a store go on sale in a 7 - 15 week cycle.  The key of coupon-ing is to save the coupon until the item goes on sale.  This is what this system helps you with.  Best case scenario is to buy enough of the sale item to last until the product goes on sale again in a few weeks or month.  That's why you want multiple copies of the newspaper.  With the same reasoning, see if your neighbors or relatives will give you their unwanted copies of Red Plumb.

Give yourself time to walk through this system slowly.  The first time seems confusing, but it will become very, very simple in no time at all.  You'll be whizzing through in less than 10 minutes by the 2nd time.  Get out there and SAVE!



 

Using the Internet to Save (Janssen)

I love the Internet. That's probably not a big surprise to anyone, seeing as I have a graduate degree in information studies, not to mention two blogs.

I particularly love that the Internet means I can take advantage of great deals without spending my whole life researching them.

For instance, when I'm placing an order at an online store, I can easily Google "Lands End free shipping code" and see if I can get free shipping. Or to see if Old Navy has any 10% off codes. It takes me an extra 30 seconds and it saves me money. Nothing to complain about there.

As I've started getting more into coupons, I've also started using the power of Google to help me use them more efficiently.

For instance, this week, coupons.com had $3 Huggies coupons. I could have just taken them to the grocery store and used them there, but I had a sneaking suspicion that there was a better deal out there and a smarter way to use up those coupons. I Googled "Huggies Diaper Deal" and discovered that Rite Aid was running a sale.

Every package of Huggies was marked down to $8.99, which was already a better than average price for a drugstore. Then, if you joined RiteAid's mailing list, you got two "$5 off of $20" coupons, plus, you could use your Huggies coupons. And then, if you bought five packages, you could enter your receipt online at Rite Aid and get a voucher for a free package of Huggies diapers.

Not to mention, wipes were on sale for $2.50 a pack and there was a $2 off of 2 pack coupon as well.

If I'd used the coupons at my local grocery store, my diapers would have been $7.95 a package. Instead, they were $3.33 a package (or about nine cents a diaper). 

All for two minutes of Googling. Oh, do I love the Internet or what?

Your New Part-Time Job (Carole)

Are you getting bogged down with trying to save money on EVERYTHING??  Does it sometimes feel like a THANKLESS job?

If your answer was "yes" to either of those questions, here's an idea for you.  Try thinking of your frugal ways as a very small, part-time job.  Keep a tally sheet on the fridge, or in your smart phone of your savings.  I don't think it's worth your time to track every single penny you earn, but the general numbers of your penny pinching is nice to know.

There are a couple of methods for tracking your savings.

1.  You can go back into your own financial records a few months (or years) and see how much you USED to spend on certain items like food, eating out, gasoline, car payments, rent, and clothing.  List these numbers on your chart and see how far below them you are keeping your current spending during the month.

2.  Or you can look up on-line to see how much the average American family that is the same size as yours spends in these same categories (i.e.  average monthly food budget for a family of 4 in the the US is $600).  Track your spending compared to these averages and see how much you can save.

Any money you've saved is your "earnings" on this new part-time job you've started.   Being able to see total dollars saved in a month is a big boost to your confidence that you are making a difference for you family and your commitment to keep it up!

When you think of yourself saving a couple of hundred dollars (or more) on all your combined purchases in a month, suddenly taking the time to clip coupons or drive to Sam's Club or wash your own car begins to look like a good use of our time.  Most of the ways we save money don't really take that much time, but they do take some and that time is definitely worth the money!

Turns out Ben Franklin was right, "A penny saved is a penny earned."

I'd love to hear any numbers you'd like to share!  We're all in this together. . .

May I mention also, what TERRIFIC ideas our readers share in the comments!  If you don't read that part of the blog, you should!  We've got the smartest group of readers out there.  You inspire me every day!

A Peek at the Promised Land (Carole)

A few weeks ago, Tara commented that she didn't see the point in being frugal, frugal, frugal just so she could be a millionaire when she and her husband are 80!  What is the fun in that??  Maybe some of you have had the same thoughts as you've thought about coupon-ing, garage sale-ing, eating at home. . .   Hopefully, I can give you a glimpse at where this whole Frugal Life thing is really headed.

If you have credit card debt, car loans and/or student loans, most people (when you finally get very serious about it) can pay all of it off within 3 years.  We have never carried credit card debt, but we've had a few car loans and we had over $60,000 in student loans back in the 1980's -- so about $130,000 in today's money.   We paid minimum payments for a number of years, and then we got religion.  We paid off our car in about 8 months and our student loans in about 2 years.  So we paid off all our consumer debt in right around that 3 year mark.  We weren't making tons of money and we had 3 children.  We were extremely average.  You could probably pay things off faster than we did.

Our next step was paying off our house.  We knew a couple of families our own age (early 30's) who had paid off their houses.  We were AMAZED.  Could we do that too??  How long would something like that take?  We owed about $160,000 on our house at the time.  As a little family we confronted this monumental financial goal with everything we had.  We printed out an amortization schedule (numerous pages of small type -- very scary), and taped it ALL to the back of the door where the bills were paid in our house.  Every month when we paid our regular house payment, we also added as much extra $$ as we could scrape out of our home budget and sent that along to the mortgage company too -- that extra money goes straight to the principle.   We often gathered our 3 girls into the room while we marked off  the payment amount with a highlighter pen and circled all the skipped interest payments that NEVER HAS TO BE PAID-- EVER!!  Did we starve through this time?  Live on nothing?  Never leave the house?  No, we actually took a few pretty decent vacations along the way and fed and clothed everyone.  Probably saw a few movies too.  But we stuck to our house payback schedule.  We threw everything we could at this debt and in 3+ years we received our title, free and clear, in the mail.  That is a moment never to be forgotten.

We paid that house off in 1996.  In 2003 I wanted a bigger house (we had more children, the older ones were larger, and we wanted to live in a better school district).  We found the house we wanted and went back into a $100,000 mortgage (we were able to pay for MOST of the house with cold, hard cash from the sale of our first house -- that felt very, very nice).  We paid off this new mortgage in about 2 years.  I thought I would mention here that both times we got down to the last $30,000 on our mortgage, extra money just started appearing.  I can't even explain it.  It's like the Lord knows you are serious about taking care of your family and your finances, so He blesses you beyond anything you've ever seen.  The last $30,000 was paid off about 5 months earlier than scheduled -- both times.  When you get to that point, let me know if this happens to you too!

So, when you've paid off all of your debt -- in under 5 years probably -- how does life look?  It is an amazing place to be.  Think of the amount of money you bring home every month in your paycheck.  Now think of how much it would cost you to live with no major bills.  No credit card payments, no car loans, no student loans, no house payment.  Can you even wrap your mind around that?

You still have to buy food, electricity, gasoline, car insurance, clothes, property taxes.  That's about it.  Hmm.  How much would that add up to in a month?  Not very much.  All the rest of your take home pay is YOURS.  Wow.

What will you do with it?

Saving is a big thing.  Putting as much money as you can into tax-free or tax-deferred programs is very smart.

Beyond that, you can spend it on anything you want.  You could buy a new car with cash  -- every few months!  You could buy a brand new boat in cash, also in just a few months.  You could redecorate your entire house.  Put in a backyard pool.  You can be generous beyond anything you can imagine.  Travel to Europe, Asia, Africa -- every few months.  All for cash.

You will finally be free.  All the hard work you (or your spouse) puts in to bring home money, will finally benefit YOU.  All in about 5 years.

Enjoy.

Cautiously Couponing (Janssen)

"Clipping coupons" is pretty much synonymous with living frugally, and yet I have resisted coupons for years. I had this sense that coupons were really only for mega-processed food or expensive brand-name products. I assumed that by buying the store brands or only baseline ingredients, I could save the same amount of money. My grocery budget is pretty bare-bones to begin with, so I figured coupon clipping was just a waste of my time and effort.

I'm pretty convinced, now, that I was wrong. This past month, I've started making cautious steps into the world of couponing and I'm beginning to see that I can save myself a fair amount of money.

When I started looking into it, I was determined that I would not

• Take the newspaper (I hate the smell and the feel of newspaper, not to mention paying for it to pile up in my house)
• Buy things I wouldn't have bought otherwise
• Spend a lot of time on it

Here's what I realized:

First, I can get enough coupons online. I like coupons.com, redplum.com and smartsource.com. I would also use the mystical power of Google to find coupons for specific items. We use soy milk instead of regular milk because we can't get through regular milk before it goes bad - half a second of Googling gave me a coupon for 75 cents off any Silk soy milk product. Ta-da! (I also use the backside of paper we get in the mail or from work and school so I don't have to use up my precious good paper and I set my printer to fast-draft so it uses very little ink).

Second, figure out what your store's policy on doubling coupons is. It was one of the FAQs on my grocery store's website, so it took me approximately ten seconds to find out that they will double any coupon that is 99 cents or less. So, if you have a 75 cent coupon, you'll really get $1.50 off. I discovered that they double ALL the coupons under 99 cents, even the ones that say "Do Not Double."

Third, you need to time your coupons to go along with sales. For instance, we go through a humiliating amount of sour cream because, well, I love sour cream; I firmly subscribe to my mom's cooking rule "if it tastes bad, add sour cream." But I don't even wait for it to taste bad. This week, when my grocery store's circular came around, I noticed that Hood sour cream was on sale for 99 cents a container, which was a good deal to begin with. Then, thanks to RedPlum, I got a 50 cents off coupon, which doubled, meant my sour cream was free. No way was the store brand cheaper than FREE! Same thing with the yogurt - it was on sale for $2 (for a pack of four), and I had a $1 off coupon. And if you bought a certain amount, you got a $10 off coupon for your next shopping trip, which took it down to about 12 cents a cup. Much cheaper than the store brand at 50 cents a cup.

Fourth, take advantage of your store's weekly deals and specials. For the last four or five months, I've bought the off-off-brand of Cheerios because they were only a dollar for an eight ounce box (which is about 2/3rds the size of your average box of cereal). This week, if you bought four boxes of General Mills cereal, you got four dollars off, plus 10 cents off every gallon of gas. Combined with my four cereal coupons that I'd printed off (one for each box) and were then doubled, I got my cereal for 89 cents a box. Bigger boxes, less money spent. Plus cheaper gas.

I saved $18 last week with my coupons, bringing my total grocery bill to only $28 for the week. My poor husband heard about it all afternoon.

I'd say it's about thirty minutes of work a week, once you figure out what sites you like and get the hang of reading your store flier. Definitely worth my time.

Anyone else have tips for making coupons work without it being a huge production?