Coupon Stewardship!

Hello Everyone! We've had a beautiful week with temps up on the 40's everyday which is helping to melt the snow (We can see the top of our fence now!). I was sick some this week though but have recovered and the boys were out of school Friday so we returned to the slopes. They absolutely love it! Mason played his last Durango Rec basketball game today but they will continue to practice for future tournaments. Mike's parents are coming on Tuesday to spend a week with us and we are super excited! Our passports have arrived and we are counting the days until Spring Break when we will be visiting San Diego, CA and Rocky Pt, Mexico!!! 20 more days!!

I entitled this entry "Coupon Stewardship" because I want to share with you my strategies for being good stewards with our money when it comes to grocery shopping in the hopes that maybe it might help some of you out there. Last week, I bought $220 worth of groceries and only paid $100 for them. How is this possible? Well, first of all you have to be a coupon clipper. I receive no newspapers with coupons in them so most of my coupons are printed off a website called http://www.couponmom.com/. This website goes more in depth on how to save money but I am going to give you my version of some of their principles. Basically, you collect as many coupons as you can, even if that means buying several Sunday papers to get more coupons. As mentioned earlier, we have no coupons in our papers here and obtaining a Denver Times is too inconvenient for me so I print mine out. The key to getting the best deal on your products is to wait for that item to go on sale and then use the coupon. On top of that, one of our grocery stores here has double/triple coupons up to $1 so if you are buying a product that is on sale, plus you have a coupon for, say $.40, then you get $1 off of that item. The other grocery store here, only does douple/triple coupons at certain times so you have to check their weekly ads to see when that is.

Now, I use to clip coupons for items that I never used and would end up throwing a lot of them away. Because I am using printer ink (that costs money!) to have coupons, I am very selective and only print out items that we use. I also use to think that I could purchase the generic brand for less than I could get the name brand items even with the coupons.....that still is the case with some products but with others, when you catch them on sale, the coupons make them a lot less expensive.

I have totally changed the way I purchase groceries now and handle our money . Pre-Colorado, I strictly bought week to week. I knew exactly how much money we had every week to spend on groceries and I did my best to stay with in that budget. Here, living out in "mountainville", 25 minutes from the closest grocery store and always risking snowbound status, I have learned to stock my pantry and freezer. I know we all handle our money in different ways, but for us now, we put everything on our Visa and pay it off every month. This way we earn rewards from our purchases which is usually a $25 check every month or so. Therefore, I have a little more freedom in purchasing more than what we need every week, and I can buy up things that are on sale. If cereal is on sale for $1.50, I buy 5 or so boxes and don't have to buy any cereal for the next couple of weeks. Once you start buying this way, your pantry will fill up quickly and it will come down to you only buying what's on sale this week + necessary staples you need for that week.

Another change we made was that in Cullman, I got to where I mainly purchased everything from Wal-mart. Here, we only have two other grocery stores (not including the Natural Organic grocery stores mentioned in an earlier post) so I am able to review their sale's ads on Wednesdays, make a list of items from each store that are on sale that I want, check my coupons to see if I have any for those products, and only go to Wal-mart for things that I may not can get on sale at these other two places. Yes, Walmart will match their prices on items and that is another option for saving money but I like to support the other grocery stores also.

Now you may be thinking, "this sounds very time consuming"......well, it can be but if you PLAN ahead and go in with your list, it helps cut time tremendously. Planning out where you are going, picking out your coupons, and making your list, should only take an hour or so of your week but when you look at it as saving half on your grocery bill, I'd say it's worth it! If you are a working mom, I can totally understand how you wouldn't have time for this.....but being a stay-at-home mom, I have the time to shop this way and totally feel like we are being the best stewards of the money God provides to us by using coupons this way. I still throw away coupons because that item may not go on sale and it's something we don't "have" to have before the expiration date is up on them, but I may print 3 or 4 coupons for a product out if it's on sale, just to stock up. I love it! I love the deals!

I hope this might help someone out there and if I've been unclear about anything, send me an email or leave me a message. I will add that I organize my coupons in a 3 ring binder using baseball card sleeves so that I can see them well. I usually take my binder in each store just in case there's something I missed, but I'll already have the coupons for that store clipped together to save on time. I also don't save half on my grocery bill every week, but where I was spending around $150 per week to feed my family of 5, I spend around $100 a week now on this "stock up on sale items" plan, thus reduring our grocery bill by $200 per month and we have A LOT more food on hand. Let me know if this is something you end of trying......it sure works for us!