A Few Frugal Tips For Couponing & Grocery Shopping

I don't usually buy a Sunday paper. And I don't always shop with coupons. We won't go into all of the reasons why (I'm too lazy?) but we will look at a few ways that I coupon when I coupon.  And I'll throw in another hint at the end just for the fun of it. :)

It's true that we don't subscribe to the paper. We have in the past but found that it usually was recycled or composted unread. That's not a good value. However, if I happen to want a Sunday paper, I stop and buy one on the way home from church.

"Well, it looks like you're not much of an expert when it comes to couponing then," you say? Maybe not. Or maybe I've learned to maximize my time and effort. Here are a few tricks I use while living a frugal,lazy life.

1. Only buy the newspaper when there are coupon inserts. Here's one site that lists what and when.  No need to stop for a paper when no coupons are scheduled!
2. Start your own coupon swap between girlfriends, family, or church members. All it takes is one gullible, er, willing individual to keep the donations and to organize them into a usable fashion. In our family, it is my mom who passes her dissected coupon inserts down to me and my married daughters. We, in turn, share our own with each other before cutting everything out and passing on any we don't want to the willing coupon coordinator at our church who sorts and files them in a huge binder. We have access to that binder after church. (I stress "after" because there better not be anyone going through the book during the worship services!)
3. Besides printing additional coupons from Smartsource and Red Plum directly from a home computer you may wish to purchase popular coupons for a nominal fee from a clipping service. This site offers a review of some of them. More may be found via Internet searches. (When I did a search of my city I found that there is a service in my neighborhood! Who knew?!) If you find one in your area you might be able to pick up your selections saving the postage and cutting the wait time.
4. Once you've got your coupons there is the problem of organizing them. This is where my program always broke down. I hate searching through my folder or envelopes while in the store so I devised a workable solution for me. File the coupons by store rows. Then it doesn't matter that my store hides the toilet paper& in the same row as the cereal. Those coupons are in the same pocket. And I'm only dealing with one pocket at a time, moving my finger from pocket-to-pocket as I progress through the store. (If I go to a different store I need to remember that the toilet paper coupons are in with the cereal ones, but that's never been a problem for me.)

*I've got one more tip for helping to stay on track in the grocery store. Put the allotted grocery budget on a store gift card. I used to shop with cash (a la the Dave Ramsey method) but was astounded at the things that we might designate as "groceries" in a financial pinch. I might get to the store and find that the envelope money bought dog food at the pet store. (Hey! I thought we were trying to keep us from eating Alpo!) Putting the money onto a reloadable store gift card put a stop to that. And I'm especially careful with my purchases knowing there is a finite amount on that card. (Can you say, "No, son, there isn't enough on the card to purchase that big bag of beef jerky"? I can now.)

As an added bonus, since I shop at Kroger and our church participates in their Neighborhood Reward Program my reloads mean the company will make a 4% donation toward church summer camp for children who can't afford to pay their way. Check with your retailer to see if they have a similar program and then ask your church or charitable organization to participate.

Okay, I don't just shop at Kroger. But I do buy about 75% of my groceries there.  I reload my card 3 weeks out of each month and use the money for the 4th week to shop elsewhere. Someone else might need to put 75% and save 25% as cash each week for other expenditures, like dog food from the pet store or sales at other markets. Whatever works best for you. This is just how I budget to make sure only one "member of the family" is required to eat dog food. :)