Posts Tagged ‘Saving Money’

By Samantha

This is the first in what will be a monthly series on couponing.

I know you have seen them. Those crazy looking ladies in the grocery story, with a Zip-Loc bag full of coupons, desperately flipping through them and piling groceries on top of groceries into the cart. I know you’ve thought to yourself, “Why would anyone want to subject themselves to this apparent humiliation of being labeled a crazy-coupon-lady?” You have probably rolled your eyes at these crazy-coupon-people, and continued to the register where you paid full price for a bottle of laundry detergent.

Well, let me enlighten you.

Using coupons, and saving lots of money doesn’t mean that you have to turn into that crazy-coupon-lady you see in the grocery  tore every week. There is a better and easier way to go about couponing, and I am going to teach you how. But first… let me give you a little background on why I started using coupons for my weekly grocery trips.

My mom used coupons when I was younger. She had one of those accordion style organizers, but she didn’t really succeed much with coupons. Just a few things here and there. About a year or so ago, she started using coupons again except this time she was taught how to use them properly. Her first week grocery shopping with coupons, she saved nearly 100 dollars. A few weeks later, hubby received a pay cut at work (excuse was the bad economy), and I had to find a way to save money. Considering that we had no debt, and the only bills we paid were rent, and utilities… I decided that tackling our groceries every week would be the place to start. Since hubby and I had gotten married, we did our grocery shopping at Wal-Mart– mainly because they were so much cheaper than the regular grocery stores. Even still, we were spending about 60 dollars a week on groceries (not counting the weeks that we had to buy diapers & formula), and hardly bringing anything home to show for it. Just enough food for supper for the rest of the week. So, my mom sat me down one Sunday afternoon and taught me the art of using coupons.

Excited to buy groceries with my coupons, I quickly saved $10 the first week. That may not sound like a lot, but to a couple of broke people, it was a fortune! Those $10 soon turned into $20, and $20 turned into $30, and before too long I was saving more than I was spending. On average, our weekly grocery bill is around $30 and we are coming home with a lot more than we used to when we were shopping at Wal-Mart.

So, are you ready to save your family some money? I mean, lots and lots of money? How does free groceries sound? What about paying twenty five cents for a box of cereal… name brand cereal at that? Well, then…take notes, because I am going to teach you how to work the coupons!

Where do I get coupons?

You can generally find coupons in the Sunday Newspaper. You know, mixed in with all of the different ads. If you’re not looking for them, you’ll swear they’ve never been there. But they have been. There are generally two to three different magazines of coupons in the Sunday Paper. There is Smart Source, P&G (Proctor and Gamble), and RedPlum. All three come in a magazine type booklet, generally with an advertisement on the front and the name of the company. When you open these books, you’ll find tons of great coupons for different products like shampoo, deli meat, snacks, laundry detergent, deoderant, etc.

What do I do with the coupons once I cut them out?

Go out and buy yourself a 3-ring binder, dividers, and baseball card holders. Organize your 3 ring binder in the order in which a grocery store is generally laid out, and then slip in your coupons for each divider into the baseball card holders. Here is a wonderful website that will help you get your notebook organized!

How do I find out what is on sale?

Grocery stores and pharmacies (like CVS, Rite Aid, & Walgreens) generally put an ad in the Wednesday newspaper and Sunday newspaper with a list of their sales; but I tend to go the grocery store’s website and look at their ads from there. I write down what sales I am most interested in. You can go to Southern Savers website; she actually already has the grocery ads listed with what coupons to use (and even coupons you can print out) and how much an item would cost using the sales & coupons.

When it’s time to go grocery shopping, I take an envelope and write my grocery list on the front. I then slip the coupons that I am going to use inside the envelope. It’s important that your coupons are also organized inside the envelope. Depending on how many coupons you have, it can be hard to find the one you want to use quickly. If I am going to more than one grocery store that day, I put my coupons in order of how they are listed on my list, and in order of which grocery story I am visiting first, second, etc. It is also a good idea to take your 3-ring binder shopping with you, because there are also a lot of sales that aren’t listed in the ads and you could miss out on some more really great deals!

Working The Sales

Just because something is on sale, doesn’t mean it’s a great deal. Make sure that you are getting the most out of the sale and your coupon. For instance: Kelloggs Mini Wheats were on sale, buy one get one free (B1G1) and I had a coupon for $1 off of 3. After calculating how much the actual price would be with my coupon, I came up with it costing 5 dollars to get 3. That’s when I found another coupon for a 1.50 off 2. So I ended up paying 2.50 for two HUGE boxes of Frosted Mini Wheats.

When an item is Buy One Get One Free (B1G1), you do not have to buy both items to get the sale price. You can buy just one of the items, and get it half off! For instance: A box of spaghetti is on sale B1G1, for a total cost of 1.20 for 2 boxes, but you only need one box. By getting one box instead of two, you will pay only .60. – Some grocery stores will let you use a manufacturer coupon AND their store coupon together on one item. Use those two together and you’ll get an even better deal! For Instance: You have a Mini Wheats coupon for a 1.00 off of a box of Mini Wheats, and you also have your grocery store’s store coupon for 1.00 dollar off of a box of Mini Wheats, if you put the two coupons together, you’ll get 2.00 off of that one box of Mini Wheats (can you tell how much I love Mini Wheats?)! – Some grocery stores will double your coupons up to .60! For Instance: You have a coupon for .50 off of a bag of shredded cheese, the grocery store will double that coupon, giving you 1.00 off of that bag of cheese.

Doubling and tripling coupons can really, really add up. This is how you can get a lot of things for free, or just a few cents. For more grocery store savings tips click here. There are also websites you can go to, to print out coupons. Yes, grocery stores do take printed out coupons. You don’t have to have any special paper, and you won’t be arrested for trying to forge a coupon. I know, I was a skeptic myself the first time I used my printed out coupon. I still get a little nervous when I hand the cashier my computer coupon, but they take them without a second thought. Some of my best deals, I have gotten with a printed out coupon! Coupon Mom [DOT] Com provides several different websites that you can print out coupons with. There are even restaurant coupons too! If you think that you lack the time or the dedication to use coupons, make it fun! For instance, treat yourself to something with the money you save on groceries in a week.

If you save $50, take that money and buy yourself some new shoes or a new dress. Maybe you’d like to put the money you save back into a savings account to save for family vacation or another big event you have coming up. Whatever it may be, you are saving money by using coupons and that means you can put that money toward other things that you may want or need to save money for! Leave a comment with any questions you may have about couponing. I want to make sure I can help everyone I can save the money that they deserve to be saving!

What are your tips to save money at the grocery store?

Samantha is a stay at home mom of one crazy little girl. She writes out her antics almost daily on her personal blog, Apple Juice and Milk,in an attempt to help others feel better about their lives… when compared to hers.

By Megan

A professional procrastinator, that is.

And I see that a lot in my line of work, too. We put off until the last possible minute the collection of receipts and information for tax returns. We wait until April 14^th to schedule the appointment for 6:00pm on the 15^th. Or, maybe we wait until mere hours before deadline to write.

Either way, I’m pretty good at putting things off.

So, if you are a tax procrastinator, this is a list of things you DON’T want to put off between now and April 15th (and you have EXACTLY one month left!):

• Making sure you have all of your documents: Review the income statements – are they all there? Did you sell stocks or other assets this year? You need information on what you paid for them. We’re going to want your mortgage information. Oh, and yeah, don’t forget the kids’ social security numbers. We’re pretty sure you want the deductions associated with them, and we have to have that to claim ‘em.
• Making your appointment with your tax pro: You aren’t the only one who waited! If you put off making that call, you may not get in. Call early, and avoid making your appointment for that dreaded 15^th. That way, if you didn’t follow tip #1 up there, we still have time to get the rest together.
• Mailing your check: If you were wise enough to come in earlier in the season, and have a balance due to a taxing agency, don’t be tempted to wait until the 15^th to mail the check! As more and more taxpayers use e-filing, fewer and fewer post offices are staying open late to accommodate the mailers. Give yourself at least a few days!
• Mailing your return: So, this is about the same as above, but worthy of its own line. If you can do it, file electronically, but if you can’t, be sure to get the return in the mail with plenty of time. Oh – and plenty of postage! Nothing hurts worse than sending it out on time, only to get it back because you were $0.12 short on those stamps.

Honestly, I recommend not putting off the preparation process at all. Your tax professional may have some great ways to help you save on that tax bill, like contributing to your Individual Retirement Account (IRA), but you have to do that by that filing deadline. If you’ve waited until then to do your return, you’ve missed the window. Additionally, your preparer is going to be less stressed in say, March. They can spend more time with you, reviewing potential credits or deductions.

Even if you are going to owe, it’s better to know exactly what you need well in advance of needing it, right? If you file your return on March 18^th, you still get until that April 15^th deadline to send in your payment. (Although, as previously stated, you probably shouldn’t wait quite that long!) And for all that – you might be pleasantly surprised that you’re getting money back!

So, from one procrastinator to another, a few gentle tips for making taxes less, well, taxing!

Megan shares snippets of her life and random, well caffeinated thoughts as a working mom of three on her blog,  All A Bunch of Momsense. Family, food, and fun at your fingertips!