Hi Tawra,
I so appreciate the effort that you put into your website. I’ve been using your Dining on a Dime for about a year now. Because of it I never have food to throw out and have plenty of dibs and dabs of frozen things to make a quick meal.
My question is about Coupons. There was someone on Wife Swap last week that purchased $70 in groceries for $10 by using coupons. I just don’t understand them. Maybe our newspapers, the Portland Oregonian or Food Day, just don’t have very good deals (for Safeway, Albertsons, QFC, and Fred Meyer). I shop at WINCO Foods and it seems to be the cheapest but I still spend about $65/week for 2 adults. The coupons and specials from the other grocers are still more expensive then Winco’s normal pricing.
I hear about double coupons and manufacturers coupons. Where do people find these? Any suggestions?
Many blessings to you and your family. You make a difference in our lives.
Robin
Hi Robin,
Thanks for the encouragement and I’m so glad we have been able to help save on your grocery bill.
I don’t use coupons that much myself. Sometimes I will find a really great deal and use a few but it’s not a regular occurrence for me and I still only spend about $350 a month on groceries.
When we lived in Idaho we had the same problem, none of the stores doubled the coupons and the ads were horrible. I spent about $125 a month on groceries (for 2 adults and 2 toddlers) just by watching sales and buying only “necessary” food. We didn’t buy a lot of soda, juice, chips etc.
If you live in an area that has good coupons and stores that double them you can get some pretty good deals but you really have to enjoy doing this. I don’t.
For the coupon queens like the lady you mentioned enjoy doing this as their hobby and I have no problem with that. It does take time and effort to look up the ads, match the coupons and plan the menus accordingly. It also takes practice and there is a learning curve on what stores will do when it comes to using more than one coupon for an item or using Internet coupons.
As a general rule I find that I can spend the same amount on groceries as the coupon queens without have to mess with it. In the end it is about how much you SPEND and not how much you save. If you save $500 using your coupons but your grocery bill is still $600 a month, well that’s not much of a savings.
How much you spend is also the reason I wrote Dining On A Dime and our Grocery Savings E-course. I got tired of reading these “how to save money” books all they kept saying over and over was “use coupons”. Well, you don’t have to use coupons to have a small grocery bill and I wanted to show that. It is really more about how you use the food you have and not wasting food.
There are a lot of good coupon sites out there. If you want to check out how some of these ladies do you it you can go to Money Saving Mom or Freebies4Mom to get started. They will help you decide if this is something you want to mess with or not.
Tawra
greetings from across the columbia river. if you get the paper all the ads come in a lil known fact that is advertised in small print on the wal mart commercials is that they will take others coupons and i do believe honeor the sale items . you have to like shopping at walmart fo rthat to happpen. i try and stay away from there.
what i do is i shop everywhere. i don’t have a car so i shop wherever is easiest. i know safeway is high but they dbl their coupons in the ads you can get the couponm doubler. but i go straight for the 4 main clearance sections at the store. i head to the meats first. one month we were eating pork everyday becaus ethats how cheap irt woas on sale. were all porked out by the way . lol well any way i than head to the clearance rack that they hav in the back near the meats. peruse that rack. than i head to the dairy /oj and luncheon meat areas. i check dairy fo rthe ypogurt gogurt and danactive markdowns. sometimes i can get it for les sthan a dollar for dan active yogurt drinks. than i look at the luncheon meat area becaus ethey are always having a markdown of atleast 30% if ot getting meat for a dollar. also good if your a lunchables fan. than last but not least the oj aisle. i dont buy a lot of jjuice at all as our fridge and freezer icebox combo is so small but all the time they have some kind of markdowns. i have noticed that tuesday wednesday is the best day for meat markdowns at safewqay. now on to freddy’s they are always marking down meats dairy and some othe rthings. i went there at 9 am this morning and they had steak/ ribs/chicken/pork and hamburger marked down. same thing for them they always markdown items . so while i wa sthere i went to the bakery section and found garlic bread marked down. sur ei buy some convenience foods but i do that so my mom who is becoming less mobile can eat or cook while i’m gone and it works just great for us. slowly our food budget get s smaller and smaller because i want to save more money. and i do that with the tips i find on here. yes i could get way more carrorots if i dint buy the baby carroits but that saves me frustration in the kitchen when all i have to do is throw in the carroits and cut up a few potatoes and add meat and let the crock pot go.
hope some of those sjhopping tips help. hopefullly you make great use of the bulk foods aisle at winco they are a life and budget saver. living on a dimes book talks about how you should never buy mor ethan you need and fi you do and waste it its not really a savings. i did that and wow it made a difference , especially on something like parmesan cheese, something i rarely use.
good luck
There is also a very good website out there that I have found… http://www.thegrocerygame.com. What it does is match up the weekly specials at your grocery store (or drug store) with the coupons that have been available for the last few weeks and have not yet expired. You can get a trial membership for 4 weeks for $1. After that it depends on how many stores you want the list of “deals” to cover. I would STRONGLY encourage anyone who is considering this to try the almost-free trial membership first to make sure the market(s) and store(s) you shop at in your area are part of her list…but if it does, it can save you lots of money IF (and here is the always big “IF”) the specials are on items you would already be buying. I thought it was worth looking at and, when the trial ran out, I subscribed. It generally cut our family (2 adults/1 child) grocery budget down to about $200/month (about half of what I was spending before). Anyway, it is worth a look and I hope it was OK to list the website (no it’s not MY website and I do not get any $$ from referrals or from her website in any way).
Thanks for this post, it was very encouraging! We are also in an area with few coupons and certainly no stores that would double them… it’s nice to read posts that don’t focus on using coupons and shopping at certain stores. For us, saving on groceries has meant learning a few tricks along the way…
Like stocking the freezer with meat on the days it’s marked down to half price (right before a holiday weekend!!)
We also save up our Air Miles, Aeroplan, etc and cash them in for gift cards for grocery stores and gas, or for gift certificates for clothing stores.
I also live in the Portland area and don’t get alot of savings from the coupons I clip–but I only clip the ones for things I regularly buy anyway–don’t figure it’s a good deal no matter how much I save if it’s not something I would buy anyway. My savings mostly comes from buying only the super sale items that I use from each store. We live 20 minutes from “town” and on Saturday’s when the kids have karate/ballet lessons, we spend a couple of hours running errands and stopping at several stores for the best deals. We usually stop at 3-4 stores per weekend. By stocking up when a store has great deals, I can usually keep my grocery bill at $600/month for a family of seven, plus daycare kids. I could probably get it even lower if my husband didn’t add things to the cart-he’s worse than the kids about asking for things not on the list LOL
I don’t have any groceries that double coupons, either, but I do find that couponing has cut my grocery bill way down anyway. I work with a rough budget of $50/week for a family of three. Similar to the grocery game is http://www.couponmom.com. That site will also match up the sales items to which newspaper insert you can find a coupon in (you have to save your inserts from the newspaper), but it’s FREE. I would also repeat Tawra’s recommendation of MoneySavingMom and Freebies4Mom. You find most coupons in your newspaper inserts, but they will tell you where to find other ones. You also have to look at what your family is going to eat/use and decide which deals are worth it for you.
I’m in Illinois and most of our stores will not take the internet couopons. I’ve seen some great coupon online but they refuse to take them even if I involve the manager. Connie
I have been to many coupon websites but the best I have found is http://www.hotcouponworld.com/index.php.
After you make a user name then all you need to do is go to the forum sections and start looking at the different stores forums. CVS is amazing for getting deals. I recently purchased $80 worth of merchandise for $10. That included toilet paper, paper towels and groceries.
Hope this helps someone.
I agree. None of the stores around here will take coupons you print off the internet, not even Wal-Mart with a copy of their policy in your hand. What do you do then?
lori, i dont go as far as internet coupons but if you take other stores circulars to walmart they are supposed to honor it. this week for the football game safeway i do believe it is , is having great deals on grapes and other items you would normally buy for a super bowl party. don’t forget about walgreens who is nototious for having super deals in their ads and then not having the product on their shelves. they will give you one of those slips where you can still get the product at sale price at a later date.
We do have stores around here (North Texas) that do double or triple coupons (under 39 cents), but the only coupons I use are ones for products I normally buy. To me, it’s not a savings to buy a product that my family won’t eat or use, even if I’m getting it for next to nothing or free.
I belong to a couple of Yahoo groups where some of the members gloat on how much they save using coupons - $100 worth of stuff for $1 as an example, or getting a years worth of deodorant for free. They spend hours “playing the coupon game”. One gal’s storage area looks like a small grocery store.
The stores here won’t take internet printed coupons either.
My mainly cooking from scratch, buying items we use all the time in bulk and using some coupons, I average about $275 a month to feet four adults (2 men) and two large dogs.