Is It Worth It To Clip Coupons?

I started my coupon experiment in January to see if I could do anything about lowering my astronomical grocery bill. I should mention that my groceries mostly consisted of organic meat, poultry, fish & dairy items, fresh produce, whole grains, baking supplies, and condiments. I did not purchase much in the way of packaged snack foods (except for DS's school lunches), beverages, or convenience foods. I was very skeptical about whether using coupons would do me any good.

While it is true that you won't generally see coupons for items like chicken and fresh produce, I have been able to lower my grocery bills substantially by observing a few tips.

First of all, the main idea is to

• Use coupons to enhance a TRUE sale

By doing this you will generally save 50% 0r more on the items you purchase.

So let's break this idea down:

• Maximize your savings by pairing a coupon with a sale item.
• A rule of thumb is, do not purchase an item unless it is on sale and you have a coupon.

The second key part is recognizing a TRUE sale. Lots of store ads will feature "sale" items whose sale price is not that much better than the regular price. Grocery items have a price cycle that is generally about 12 weeks long. At some point during that cycle, the price of that item is going to hit rock bottom. THIS is when you want to buy--

• BUY when the item is at its lowest price and you have a coupon.

Obviously, you should not purchase items you will not use, even if you have a coupon. (Though I'm sure I don't have to tell you this!)

How do you know when an item is at its lowest price? Well, one way is by just being familiar with the prices of the items you purchase most often. Coupon Mom suggests taking this a step farther by keeping a "price book" to track the prices. In your price book, you would list the item, the date, the price, and the store. There are various ways to organize your price book. One way is to use a page for each item, so you can track the prices easily over time. Is this tedious? Yes. But knowing when to buy can save you A LOT of money.

An easier way to do this is to refer to Coupon Mom's weekly list for the deals at your particular store. This list is great because it's a)free to use, b)correlates available coupons with the sale items for that week at your store, and c)shows you the percentage you will save with the coupon. You can figure that anything that will give you a savings of at least 50% when you use a coupon is probably a pretty good deal.

The next important idea is one I got from Coupon Mom's book.

• When is the WORST time to buy something?
• When you need it!!

If you've run out of mayonnaise and you have to go out and buy a jar, you will probably end up paying full price for it. You may save a bit by purchasing the store brand. However, consider this: if you had been tracking the price for Hellmann's (in my opinion the best, and usually most expensive, brand), waited for it to go on sale for its rock bottom price and THEN purchased it with a coupon, (even though you didn't NEED mayonnaise at that point), you would have saved a bundle over the store brand price, PLUS you would have a higher quality product.

• When an item is at its lowest price and you have coupons for it, buy more than you need.

• This way, you will always have a stash of the items you use, at greatly discounted prices, and you will not have to pay full price the next time you need them!

I think of this as the "pantry" or "stockpiling" principle.

*TIP: SAVE, don't clip. Pull out the coupon inserts from your Sunday paper, and write the date on the top of them. Save them, and just clip the coupons you need before you head to the store. Coupon Mom's list is ideal for this, as it gives the name and date of the insert in which the coupon appeared. E.g., R 9/19: that means the coupon is in the Sept. 19 Red Plum insert.

The great thing about this method is that you don't have to organize a giant pile of clipped out coupons every week. Plus, you never know when you might want a coupon for something that you hadn't anticipated. By saving the entire coupon insert, you have ALL the coupons for each week!

*TIP: To help with stockpiling when items are at their best price, it's worth it to collect extra copies of the coupon inserts each week. When I first started out, I tried to have 4 copies of each for every week. You can do this by purchasing an extra newspaper subscription, asking friends/family to save inserts for you, or just buying an extra copy of the Sunday paper at the store. That way, when that joyous day comes when Sale Price + Coupon = FREE ITEM, you will be able to get MULTIPLE free items because you will have multiple coupons for that item!

My mom lives in a retirement home and every Sunday, she LOVES to run around picking up all the extra coupon inserts she can find for me. (Her fellow residents don't use them.) It's a great way for her to know she's doing something nice for DS and me without having to spend any money.

Plus, when I find things I know she likes that are on sale, I am able to purchase them for her with my extra coupons! She loves the Lavender/Vanilla Febreeze Air Effects room spray, but told me she doesn't buy it very often because it's "expensive." Imagine her delight when I was able to present her with 4 bottles of it, that I had paid next to nothing for with coupons!

You may be wondering, how does this all work? Or, could this really work for me? Let me use a recent shopping trip as an example.

This past week, God bless 'em, the Teeter had "Super Doubles." Normally, they will double the face value of a coupon up to 99 cents. During Super Doubles week, they double the face value up to $1.98!! That means if you have a $1.50 coupon, you will save $3 on the item!

I purchased 32 items. Most of these were for DS's school lunches. I had coupons for all but 2. I bought:
1 jar of Truvia sweetener
2 boxes Fiber One Chewy Bars
2 boxes Betty Crocker Fruit Gushers
2 boxes Nature Valley Trail Mix granola bars
2 pkg Keebler Deluxe Fudge Grahams
1 Gain dish liquid
6 cans Progresso soup
2 boxes Ritz Munchables
1 pkg Old El Paso Taco shells (no coupon, but on sale for 95 cents each, regular price $1.99 = 52% savings)
1 pkg Old El Paso tortillas (same)
24-pack of Deer Park water (had a rain check from when item was on sale for $2.99)
2 South Asia noodle bowls
1 Colgate Total Advanced Whitening toothpaste
3 pkg Pillsbury Toaster Strudels
1 Wanchai Ferry frozen meal kit
1 can Pillsbury cinnamon roll dough
1 can Pillsbury orange danish dough
1 pkg John Morrell Hot Off the Bone sliced chicken
1 Dayquil Mucus Control

Let me highlight a few of these items.
Colgate Total Advanced Whitening toothpaste, 4 oz.
Regular price: $3.39
Sale price: 2 for $5 ($2.50 ea.)
Coupon: $1 (from 9/12 SmartSaver)
$2.50 (sale price)
- $2.00 coupon (coupon doubled, so worth $2)
= $0.50 final price, savings of 85%

John Morrell Hot Off the Bone Sliced Chicken, 8-10 oz.
Regular price: $4.99
Sale price: BOGO ($2.49 ea)
Coupon: $1 (from 8/29 SmartSaver)
$2.49 (sale price)
- $2.00 (doubled coupon value)
= 49 cents final price, savings of 90%

2 Simply Asia Noodle Bowls, 8.5 oz.
Regular price: $3.19 ea.
Sale price: BOGO
Coupon: $1 on 2 (from 8/29 Red Plum)
$3.19 (sale price for 2 bowls)
- $2 (doubled coupon value)
= $1.19, final price for 2 bowls, 60 cents each, savings of 81%

Dayquil Mucus Control, 10 oz.
Regular price: $6.99
Sale price: $3.49 (close out)
Coupon: $1.50 (from 8/29 Proctor & Gamble)
$3.49
- $3.00 (doubled coupon value)
= 49 cents final price, savings of 93%

I was also able to take advantage of an additional promotion going on for General Mills: Buy 20 General Mills items in one transaction, get $6 deducted from your total bill before tax.

Here are the stats for this trip:
Original price: $117.78
-Store sales: $44.22
-Coupons: $30.99
-GM promo: $6
Final price: $36.57
$ saved: $81.21
% saved: 69%

So, is it worth it? YES!!

Just Call Me.... Frugal Muse!

I've just started my own independent consulting business, and not to put too fine a point on it, things are rather tight without a regular income to depend on.

But even before this, I knew Something Had To Be Done about our grocery bill. I'm embarrassed to admit I was spending about $200 per week on groceries for our household of 3. (Well, I think pet food was lumped in there too, accounting for probably $80 per month.)

I've been taking a financial planning/education course. It was a real eye-opener to learn that I should have been spending only $100 per person per month, meaning a total of $300 per MONTH on our food. Yikes!!

Being a librarian, to figure out what to do about this problem I did what came naturally-- research. Which led me to Stephanie Nelson's extremely helpful book, The Coupon Mom's Guide To Cutting Your Grocery Bills in Half.



I was extremely skeptical about whether any of this would work for me, because I don't tend to purchase a lot of processed foodsl,for which coupons are available, and of course I've been committed to serving the family only organically produced meats, poultry, and dairy products.

I was amazed to find that putting Coupon Mom's strategic shopping tips into practice, I have been saving closer to 70% on groceries. (I will admit I have suspended my trips to Whole Foods for the time being.)

Nelson's tips basically boil down to two main ideas:
1. Only purchase items that are on sale and have a corresponding coupon (as much as possible)
and
2. Stockpile items when they are at rock-bottom prices, which allows you to "shop your freezer and pantry" so you can always prepare meals from ingredients purchased at a discount.

Yes, it seems so simple and obvious, you'd think I'd have figured it out a long time ago.

To make this process easier, Coupon Mom has a terrific website (CouponMom.com) that correlates weekly store specials with any available coupons. Each week, she makes available a list of Grocery Deals by state, so you just find your state, hit enter, and choose your store. Each store list not only gives the coupon info, she also lists the % you save by using the coupon as well.

When I first started using the site a couple of months ago, I just made a rule to stick to items on the list that showed savings of at least 50%. Although I had never tried "couponing" before, I bit the bullet and purchased a subscription to the Sunday newspaper so I could get the coupon circulars. Since I didn't have a stockpile of coupons to draw on, each week I purchase extra copies of the Sunday paper to get additional coupon fliers.

For those who can't abide the idea of using coupons, Nelson sagely advises that you can save about 30% just by sticking to store specials. Purchasing only items on sale each week can yield a surprising amount of savings! Not being inclined to fussiness, this is the method DC primarily uses with good results.

As I said, I've been able to save closer to 70% on my grocery bills over the past few months. So far, I have been able to stick to the $200/month budget for DS and me.

Yesterday I shopped at the Teeter and also at Lowes Foods, which was having some really good deals. For example, Lowes had the 50 oz. size of "All" brand liquid laundry detergent on sale. Normally, it costs $5.69, but the sale price was $2.99. AND I had a coupon for $2 off "All" from the Feb. 7 RedPlum coupon circular. After the store sale and coupon, I paid just $0.99 for the "All", a savings of 82%!

Here's the breakdown from Lowe's. I purchased 22 items.
Original price: $63.46
Store sales: $26.53
Coupons: $21.05
FINAL PRICE: $15.88
$ saved: $47.58
% saved: 75%

Of course, Nelson gives lots more tips on cutting down the food bill (other posts, perhaps?), but I've been very pleased with my success so far.

Another thing I really like about Nelson's website (CouponMom.com) is that she also promotes her program "Cut Out Hunger" by identifying low/no cost items that can be donated to your local food bank (or family and friends who could use a hand!). In fact, the deal on the All detergent was so good I ended up purchasing 2 bottles and giving both to a friend. I wasn't going to bother at first, since I couldn't find the "HE" version of the "All," which I need for my front-loading washer. But then I realized it was such a great deal, I surely knew someone who could use it.

I've realized that while using coupons doesn't help much on organic food costs (with some exceptions), it helps save so much on the other items I need to buy that there may soon be room in my budget for organic meats again. I used to spend so much money on snack items, sliced meats, cheese, peanut butter, etc. for DS's school lunches that it was quite depressing. Thank heavens, using the strategic shopping tips I've learned, I've been able to get the items he enjoys at greatly reduced costs or even free.

Low-priced is nice, but FREE is GREAT!!

Shopping.... the bane of my existence

Whew, yesterday was grocery day, and I survived it. If you love grocery shopping, please raise your hand!

For me, it's a necessary evil. I must be the world's most inefficient human, because it takes me FOREVER to get organized to go grocery shopping. First I have to menu plan. Which is tricky, because I also have to take into account who's going to be here when, and what activities are planned. Then there's my other problem.... have you ever been hungry for something, say, pasta, when you sit down to plan the menu? You get the menu all planned, then you realize you've put pasta in some form or another on the menu 3 times!

I TRY to plan: a soup day, a vegetarian day, a fish day (depends what else we might be having), each week. Yeah, doesn't always work out. Sometimes I realize I planned porkchops twice. Since DC loves them, I try to get them on the menu often. So anyway, forver. Takes me forever.

Next is making the grocery list. Even though I make the list with the recipes in front of me, I still forget things. (I blame my son. I think he is sucking the IQ points right out of my head!) Once I get the list made, I feel a lot better! I don't know why it seems like such a herculean task.

I suppose it's because I have to make 2 lists, one for the Teeter and one for Whole Foods. I have go to two stores to get what I need. That's partly because some things are available only at one place or the other. The other reason is that I'm picky (s0me would say compulsive) about the quality of the foods I purchase. I'm using "quality "loosely here, for lack of a better term-- I'm considering the whole food production chain and what is practiced or not practiced so I'm just using the word "quality" as a catch-all. I do not in any way mean to imply that I feel other food choices or foods are "inferior" to the ones that I make or buy.

Good heavens, isn't the cost of groceries is unbelievable? Last year when I was in Chicago, I didn't cook much, so I didn't buy lots of groceries. Since I was last buying a week's worth of groceries for a household, the prices seem to have practically doubled! Canned beans are now more than $1 per can, which I had never seen before. I try to be economical-- I buy the store brand on stuff that doesn't matter, like sweetened condensed milk. (I have compared the store brand ingredients and nutritional info side by side with the Eagle Brand and they are identical.) And I take advantage of store specials when I can. I do buy some "luxury" items like fine cheeses and crystallized ginger, but not all the time, and it could not possibly account for the huge increase in cost.

I know many of you out there are geniuses at saving beaucoup bucks by clipping coupons and taking advantage of what's on sale. I do that as much as I can, but for most of what we eat, I've never seen a coupon. If you know of a source of coupons for stuff like Kashi products, Ezekiel bread, organic vegetables, and tofu, LMK!! I do tend to compare prices between the identical item at the Teeter vs. at Whole Foods. De Cecco Pasta, for example, is always cheaper at WF, as is Tropicana orange juice, milk, and cream. The WF 365 store brand unsalted butter is the best deal in town at $1.60 per lb. As is the EVOO. Fruit is variable; sometimes it is cheaper at WF, sometimes at the grocery. It's always better quality at WF than at the Teeter.

I read a book (many, actually) about best ways to shop and how to shop more economically. One thing that was recommended, which I don't do, is to track the prices of everything you buy at the grocery. Yes, I mean put those data in a spreadsheet every week and track them. This is so you will know when a store special is really a "good deal" so you can stock up. I have started saving all of my receipts thinking I will get around to that oh-so-scintillating activity. Actually, I think it would be really interesting! I used to be a Sam's club member, and tried to buy things at Sam's as much as possible. Then one day I compared the price of orange juice between the Walmart Superstore and Sams, and it was MORE at Sam's!

So here is the list of things I will ONLY buy at WF: milk, butter, cream, cream cheese, eggs (free-range), meat, poultry, and seafood. I will buy cheese at the regular grocery, e.g., shredded cheddar as well as sour cream. I only buy 2 kinds of yogurt: Stonyfield Farms or Fage Greek yogurt, I'll buy them wherever I find them. As far as fruits and vegetables go, I buy most fruit at WF simply because it's fresher and tastes better. I do buy lots of vegetables at the regular grocery, but I ALWAYS buy organic celery, as celery is one of the most heavily-pesticide-sprayed vegetatables, as are peppers. I prefer to purchase organic or at least locally grown peppers when I can afford it.

So why do I only buy these things at Whole Paycheck? It's not just that I'm stuck on Whole Foods. It's because WF will not sell meat, poultry, or dairy products that are produced with antibiotics, supplemental growth hormones, or fed on animal by-products. I'd buy my groceries anywhere that would give me that guarantee.

The introduction of all those additives into the general food supply worries me greatly. Particularly the antibiotics, as I am deathly allergic to some. Though I will say I eat meat from restaurants all the time and am still alive to tell the tale. But I feel the less exposure, the better.

Like many other things, it comes down to a matter of cost. I'm fortunate in that, complain though I may, I am able to choose whether to buy additive-free foods. Not everyone is in that situation. And the way prices are rising, I may not be able to continue to have that choice. I feel that ALL food should have to pass the guidelines WF uses. There are so many things our government could do to make our food supply safer. I just may have to write to Obama, and give him a piece of my mind.