Coupon Queen!

Since last Friday, I've gotten a lot of questions about how I saved a whopping $42.31 in one grocery shopping trip, and even how I have managed to save $471.56 this year!

 

Getting married and learning to grocery shop on a budget has been hard.  Jackson grew up with a lot of name brand food stuff, so he is a snob when it comes to certain items (cheese, cream cheese, and the list goes on and on.). Once, I bought off brand cheerios and put them straight in the canister to see if he would notice. Sure enough, he called me at work to ask if I bought offbrand cheerios. WHO DOES THAT!??

 

That's not a bad thing, shopping all name brand all the time just wasn't really what I was used to.  Don't get me wrong, I grew up with awesome food.  My daddy was a great cook, but didn't see the point in spending oodles and kaboodles of money on food that was the same in the Kroger packaging that it was in the Kraft and Kellog's packages.

 

That being said, for the things we buy name brand, we coupon!!

 

 

I'm not quite as advanced as Mama June, but I do save quite a lot of money. 

 

Our grocery budget per week is $100. Some weeks we don't spend anywhere near that, but we leave what's left in the budget in there for the weeks that we need medicine or are having a special, expensive meal, or accidentally grab one too many bags of Goldfish.  If we have extra money in our budget and something is on super sale, I go ahead and use the extra money to stock up. It evens out because the normal price won't be coming out of our weekly grocery budget.

 

I don't go to any sites to obtain coupons.  I rely solely on my apps and my Sunday paper.

 

Here are the steps I follow on a weekly basis to get prepared for grocery shopping:

What you'll need: paper, a pen, a few highlighters, ads, the coupons in the Sunday paper, a little knowledge about what coupons you can combine (you can usually do a store and manufacturer coupon in the same transaction).

 ** I have found it is possible to use both a print and electronic coupon at Kroger - don't scan your plus card until after your coupons have been scanned. When they're done scanning, hit the "Go Back" on the self checkout and scan your coupons. **

 

Step One: Check your ads and mean plan around what's on sale.   If Kroger has porkchops and chicken on sale, we usually have Honey Garlic Porkchops or Apple Sage Porkchops and chicken and dumplings, Chicken stuffed shells, teriyaki chicken kabobs, etc. If they have green peppers on sale, we'll probably do stuffed bell peppers one night.

 

Step Two: Make your list writing down each thing you need for each meal.  If it helps you, break it down by meal.  I write mine down in order of the store.  Type A? Is that even a question at this point? I make different lists for different stores.  If cheerios are BOGO at Publix, I don't write them on my Kroger list, too because that gets confusing.

 

Step Three: Clip Clip Clip! I clip for everything we use and for things we'd like to try. That way I have it if I want it, but I'm not forced to use it if the price is still just too high.

 

Step Four: Download the Kroger, Food Lion, and Publix apps (for your Nashvillians) or whatever grocery apps you have available to you.  I think there may be some other good coupon apps out there, but I only use these three.  I color code my highlighters: Blue - coupons on my Kroger app (or if I'm on my Publix grocery list, it's for coupons in my publix app), green - coupons I've clipped, yellow - BOGO. Make a mark by each item noting which type of coupon you have.  If it's a print coupon and I have different coupons for different brands, I write something like "$0.25 off Charmin" and "$0.75 off Quilted Northern" so I don't have to take them out and look over and over.  Just because the coupon is worth less money doesn't mean it won't save you more.  If Charmin is $5.99 and QN is $7.99, obviously you'll buy Charmin and use your $0.25 coupon. Every little bit helps!

 

Step Five: The notebook I use has a zipper pouch in the front. I got it at Target for $4.99 and it's the best for groceries!! I put all of my unused coupons at the bottom of the pouch and all of the ones I'm going to use are folded together at the top (obviously not right now because I haven't clipped for this week yet). 

 

Step Six: Shop, Checkout, Scan your coupons, viola!!  

What's been your best shopping trip savings? Is there anything you do differently?