Just like everyone else, our money isn't covering as much as it used to these days; so recently we got on the coupon bandwagon for our grocery shopping. Traditionally, we have been convenience shoppers; buying whenever, wherever and whatever was convenient. Add onto that, we were not planning our menus, so when we got home at 6:15 in the evening, we would typically cave in to the idea of going out for dinner. This lack of imagination (and excess of laziness) was present on the weekends as well. There would be weeks where we would eat all three meals away from home.
So you could imagine when we sat down and itemized our spending, more than three times the amount of money was spent eating out than was spent on groceries. Sadly, it was not shocking to us, but it was definitely something we finally embraced. There is no way we could continue to spend our cash and eat the way we did if we wanted to support the kids' activities and classes.
I took to getting some thrifty advice from a friend / co-worker of mine. She's been a follower of pocketyourdollars.com for more than six months. She and her boyfriend were trying to better position themselves financially in order to buy a house. We met over brown bag lunches in my office the other day and she walked me through Carrie Rocha's site and gave me a few tips of her own.
Today was the second Saturday we did the mad dash around town. We first started out at CostCo to denote the cost of some items that made sense to buy in super size should the net price be worth it. We then split our grocery shopping between Cub and Rainbow after I painstakingly looked at all the specials, store coupons and manufacturers' coupons to get the best price on what we needed. Rainbow has a limited time offer for doubling manufacturers coupons on Saturdays. Needless to say, we used as many coupons there versus using them at Cub. At the end of the trips and one additional return trip because I grabbed the wrong pork chop package, we ended up with two-hundred dollars' worth of groceries for less than one-hundred thirty dollars. While it took the better part of the day to get everything accomplished, I think it was worth the effort.
My savings will continue to get better as I start to stockpile the coupon inserts and search out the online coupon specials. Bargain grocery shopping likely might become my new favorite hobby.
Which leads me to ask: what have you done to stretch your dollar further? what is the best deal you've ever gotten?
2 comments:
Very impressive Jennifer! I'll check out the site, we need to do better with less eating out too... big waste of our limited food budget. Thanks! :)
The best coupons I feel good about using are for craft stores and book stores.
Michael's (and sometimes Joann's) sends me a weekly coupon for 40% off, which I can print out as many times as I like. The Michael's in Burnsville is very generous and let's me use as many coupons as people I have with me at the time, even the 2 yr. old. Then the cash register spits out another 40-50% off coupon with the receipt. So I never pay full price at the craft store.
Borders sends me a weekly coupon for 30% off. I don't use this as frequently because we're a big library family, but I give in when Elizabeth wants to read a new book and there are 78 kids ahead of her for the library copy. :)
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