Today I am happy to announce that Young Adult Money is taking part in another giveaway! The prize is $100 cash through Paypal or Amazon gift card (winner’s choice). The theme of today’s giveaway is saving money grocery shopping, which I am super excited about because my wife and I have saved over $1,000 this year on groceries alone.
At its core, saving money on groceries is not that complicated; it’s a combination of couponing and taking advantage of deals, discounts, and promotions.
We first started to get serious about couponing earlier this year. Couponing is one of the three major ways that my wife and I save money. What I find unfortunate, though, is that despite all the savings available through coupons, there are still many people who do not take advantage of coupons. While it is true that you have to weigh the opportunity costs of whether or not it makes sense for you to spend the time couponing, I would argue that in most cases the time it takes to coupon is worth the money saved.
Below are a few things we do to take advantage of coupons:
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Sunday Newspaper – Absolutely essential if you are going to coupon. There are usually a couple hundred dollars worth of coupons in each week’s Sunday paper, and it is relatively inexpensive to purchase (about $1/week). The fact that you can still get it delivered in many parts of the country makes it even more convenient.
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Online Coupons – A site that is an absolutely “must visit” is Coupons.com. We use coupons from Coupons.com at least once a week, if not more. There are other coupon sites, but I think Coupons.com is the best place to start and is a site that we use all the time.
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Organize Coupons – Once you have a bunch of coupons cut out, it’s important to organize them. If it takes you a half hour to track down a coupon you cut out two weeks ago, it likely won’t be worth your time. There are various strategies for organizing coupons, but I personally organize mine in Microsoft Excel.
The general process I follow is: Cut out coupons, enter the information into my coupon database in Excel, and then sort them into envelopes by expiration date. This way you can easily locate coupons in the Excel file, and compile a list of the ones you plan on using on your next grocery trip.
While couponing will save you money, you can get stuff even cheaper if you match up those coupons with deals and promotions. For example, if you have a coupon for $1.50 off two bags of chips and the bags of chips are on sale for 2 for $3, you can use the coupon to get two bags of chips for $1.50. This is where the real savings are found, though it can be time-consuming to match deals and coupons.
Who’s ready to win $100??? If you want to enter the $100 giveaway, the rafflecopter widget is below. Best of luck!
If you save money on groceries, how do you do it? Do you coupon? Look for deals? Both?
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We don’t use quite as many coupons as we used to. However, we still buy things that are on sale, and try to match the coupons to the sales if we have one.
@GregatClubThrifty It’s all about time – I’m assuming the kids are a handful?!?
I LOVE that you use Excel for your coupons. I might try that myself, but I fear my wife might shoot me if I were to do that to her!
@FrugalRules Haha my wife is not that into Excel, but once I set up the database and showed her how to find things she really likes it and it saves her a ton of time!
We need to coupon. I did it like a year ago but haven’t since.
@SenseofCents Once we got into the habit of doing it we do it a ton. Granted, my wife does a lot of the work but I do organize them all for her.
We coupon when we can.. We just saved like $10 at the grocery store last night.. But if were more diligent about it and combined coupons with the sales listed in the stores’ circulars, that is when the real savings could come in.
Just FYI.. The rafflecopter plugin is just spinning for me.. I doesnt look like it is working right.
@seedebtrun Thanks for letting me know about the rafflecopter. I checked it before/after work and it seems to be working for me. Is it still not working for you?
DC, apparently you and I do many of the same things and it makes sense. Nice list of ways to save, and I am going to have to try a coupon database. Nice touch!
@DebtRoundUp Get your coupon database set up!
Buy things on sale and use coupons on them. Also do menu plan on sales item.
@tcarolinep Very nice! We need to plan our meals more often, my wife did plan out dinner this week.
I love using coupons!
I use coupons
Love using coupons to save money and using the 5% cash back at Target! Can’t believe I didn’t use coupons and that card more often in the past
We try to keep in mind multiple recipes when we go shopping and how to best resuse some leftover ingredients for the next meal. The biggest problem for us is that we like to shop organic and it costs us quite a bit more. That and there’s food waste because the farmers market is only once a week around here and sometimes we buy too much food that goes to waste if not cooked.
@Veronica @ Pelican on Money Honestly I could see myself shopping organic one day. Spending more for organic food is worth it imo.
I envy you couponers. I just don’t have the patience. Also, I hate paper cuts more than just about anything, so there’s that.
When our staples are on sale, we buy them. Lots of them. Obviously this only works for products that don’t expire within a couple weeks. But you better believe when Reece’s Peanut Butter Puffs cereal goes on sale, I snatch a winter’s supply.
@Johnny @ Our Freaking Budget Haha love the paper cuts hatred.
Also check out sites like retailmenot.com!
Nice article!!
I think a Target RedCard is one of the easiest ways of “couponing” — no matter what or when you buy, you’re bound to get 5%. I think I’ve saved.
@JonathanAlstad Target you can really crush it in the savings department if you use the RedCard + Target Coupon + Manufacturer coupon. They let you stack the Target and manufacturer coupons, and then let you take 5% off whatever is left. I don’t know why people wouldn’t use a RedCard…
I am thoroughly impressed with your couponing skills. That’s awesome to have a database. Makes my paper envelope in my purse look like chump change.
@Eyesonthedollar Thanks, but my wife is the pro! I pretty much organize them and save her time, she makes the lists and matches the deals.
I used to do a little couponing but in Europe it is not as extreme a deal as in the US, most of the time it is still cheaper to buy the store brand. All the good coupons were for things I didn’t need to buy :(
@RFIndependence That’s really too bad, we pretty much only get stuff we need, but like you said couponing is huge here.
Couponing can save you a ton of money if you do it right. And, contrary to what many people think it doesn’t take hours and hours. We save a couple hundred bucks every month and only spend about 4 hours to do it.
@JustinatTheFrugalPath Yep we don’t spend too much time on it either, once you get the hang of it and have a system set up you can really cut down the time you spend on it.
Thank you for participating. I ended up being a reluctant couponer, but learned to save a ton of money with them. I don’t use all the strategies I learned these days, but still am able to save quite a bit when i do go shopping. The problem i think most people have is that there is a learning curve an it takes some time to really learn how to use coupons to your benefit. i think most people give up before they reach this point.