Below is a guest post from Staci. Staci is a stay at home mom of 4 adorable children under the age of 4 (making a family of 6.) Staci’s home has organic food, very little meat, and incredibly healthy diet. She spends a little over $100 (each month) on groceries and saves an incredibly amount of money!!! While Staci spends very little, she is still able to come home with products that cost very little to nothing (to even moneymakers) to donate to others.
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You can see a previous guest post of her’s Here, on ways she gives back to the community.
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Once in the car, my strategy is to look at the coupons section on my receipt and count and separate each group of coupons with different pen marks. For example, last time I was at the store, I bought 10 boxes of cereal with 2 different coupons each: one manufacturer and one competitor, so I made sure they had scanned all twenty of these coupons. Then, I did another deal with two coupons each, so I made sure they had scanned the two coupons for each deal (4 total coupons). I repeat this process until I have covered all of the coupons. This systems requires knowing how many different types of coupons you have and the total number of each type.
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If you are at a drug store with a smaller transaction, you can always offer to return everything and buy the items again using the coupons that you had intended to use.
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Staci, maybe you can give us some hints! My partner and I try to eat organic and relatively healthy too, and I feel like coupons are of relatively little use to us. Seems like most of our efforts to be healthier/more natural result in buying less boxed/canned/etc food – and I don’t really find coupons for fresh produce or meats. (The store I tend to shop at doesn’t have store coupons…maybe that’s the problem?) Obviously though, you’re getting some awesome couponage, to feel that many people on such a small budget. Any hints??
Here are a few tips:
1. Eat ALL of the food you buy. This strategy will save you the most money and is best for the environment.
2. When something healthy goes on sale and there is a coupon available to make it cheap, free, or more than free, buy A LOT of that item. Freeze what you don’t need.
3. Make all of your food from scratch, including bread.
4. Figure out which store has the best price on the individual items you buy.
5. Get all of your toiletries and cleaning products for free or more than free using the systems at WAGS and CVS.
6. Before shopping for more food, use the food you already have first unless the food that you are buying is a great deal.
7. Grow your own fruit and veggies when possible.
8. Do not go shopping unless you have a plan to buy at least one item for a great price. While there, buy your staples if you need them.
9. I do not eat meat, but my husband and children do occasionally. Most of the meat comes from local farms and hunting expeditions. It is healthy, organic, and free.
10. Check frugalcouponliving.com daily for deals.
Staci
You mention that you use 10-20 coupons for a particular item. How do you get so many coupons? Is it legal to photocopy internet coupons? Do you receive that many papers?
Jennifer
hughes_jenniferl@yahoo.com
I get my coupons in various ways. Twenty coupons would be ten manufacturer and ten competitor or ten store coupons. Most of the manufacturer coupons that work for me are internet coupons. Our family business has a bunch of computers so I can usually get ten or twelve coupons (two per computer). It is not legal to copy coupons. I do get three copies of the Sunday paper per week from family and a friend, but I rarely use those. I also network with friends to get extra coupons. You can usually get unlimited copies of store coupons at the store and unlimited competitor coupons on the internet.
Staci