Saving money in tight times……

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Via my previous blog before moving it here: It may not be the most manly thing to do – but I cut coupons. I just spent the last 3 hours cutting coupons from several Sunday papers I bought today. Let me explain why.

We all have to eat. Agree? I have little control over the mortgage, the electric bill, car payment, electric bill, etc. – they are pretty close to as low as they can go. I do have control over our weekly grocery bill. Over the past several months I have stocked up and built a substantial food supply due to spending the same amount of money weekly – but getting MUCH more food!!

Here is my system:

Every I buy 4-8 Sunday papers and remove all the coupons.
I go through the coupons and cut out almost all of them. If the coupon is something that I could use – I cut it.
I organize all the coupons in a 3 ring binder with sports card pages – categorized for easy finding later.
I then watch the sales and buy those items on sale that I have coupons for to get maximum savings.

To give you an example of how much money you can save:

Let’s say you like Peter Pan Peanut Butter. Regular price is $2.80 per jar. Your local grocery store puts it on sale buy one get one free. Now, most stores will charge you half-price if you buy just one. So, you buy one and pay $1.40 – saving $1.40. Not bad – buy a few and save even more. Now – use your .25 cent coupon. Many grocery stores double manufactures coupons up to .99 cents. So – you buy a jar of peanut butter that typically sells for $2.80 – for $1.40 plus your .25 cent coupon doubles to .50 cents – which drops the price to .90 cents. You now have a $2.80 jar of Peter Pan Peanut Butter for .90 cents. That is a 67% savings!!!!!

The next part of the system is to make sure you purchase enough of each item to last until it is on sale again. In the case of the peanut butter – I might use 5 coupons and get 5 jars (for a total of $4.50). To build your food storage up – use all of your coupons whenever you find a deal that works for you. Also – always by on sale. There are no coupons for meat and fresh vegetables. With this in mind – always buy on sale and freeze what you can to last until next sale arrives. It is not uncommon for me to purchase over $100.00 worth of food for well under $50.00 My current record for savings was buying close to $100.00 in groceries for a a little over $17.00 .

A lot of people are getting into this and grocery stores are beginning to limit customers and their “couponing” activity buy setting limits per day how many coupons you use, along with how many coupons you can use that are the same. Generally you can get around this buy getting multiple “store cards” so that if the store tracks your couponing via your card – you can just change the card once you have reached your limit.

In today’s tight economy – couponing can really help not just save money – but build your food supplies.

Take care all -

Rourke