Couponing

Seeing how it has been a few days since I blogged and I am at a loss for a topic, I figured I'd write a little about couponing.

I never used to use many coupons because I figured I'd just buy generic brands and it would be cheaper. And the generic brands that I've used in the past have worked just fine. However, Dan and the kids went to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's house late December (I stayed home cuz I was working) and she told Dan all about the coupons she uses to get things for really cheap or free. She gave Dan a crash course in couponing and he came home and told me all about it. So I did some internet research and talked to Mandy about her strategies. She had taken a free (I think) course at her local library about couponing and shared what she had learned there.

One of the tricks to making coupons work for you is to pair the manufacturer coupon with a sale. Most items have a twelve week price cycle so the best time to use the coupon is when the item is at the bottom of the price cycle. Also, sometimes stores will have their own coupons and you can pair the store coupon with the manufacturer coupon.

There are several places to get coupons--Sunday inserts, online printables, ebay, coupon clipping sites. Sometimes grocery stores will also have manufacturer coupon booklets or sheets near the items that are being promoted. Once Dan found a coupon booklet at HyVee that resulted in really cheap Yoplait yogurt and free frozen veggies. He grabbed several booklets for me. :-)

Anyway, ever since I've started couponing I've actually been able to stay within my grocery budget! Dan is obviously very excited about this. Now don't get me wrong, it's not like I was going crazy with my grocery spending, but with trying to put balanced meals on the table and not using coupons, I usually went over budget by around $25-$50. Now I have no problems staying in my budget, I'm buying name brand food items and I'm stocking up. For example, I now have lots and lots of cereal and my price point for buying cereal has dropped considerably. I used to think that paying $2 for a box was a good deal. Now I generally don't buy cereal unless I can pay less than $1. And I probably won't be buying cereal for awhile since I have quite a stockpile.

Another thing we've stocked up on recently is the Nabisco Snack packs--Teddy grahams, mini oreos, nutter butters, etc. Target had them priced for $1.52 and they had a coupon for $1 off. Well, Target finally got smart and raised the price to $2. So I guess my Snack pack buying days are over. However Target currently has a coupon out for $1 off apples so we've been buying apples quite cheaply (I usually buy 3 at a time and then they only cost around $0.35-$0.50 total).

The best deal I ever got was free and almost-free meat. Once Cub had one pound packages of ground pork on sale for $1 and there were $1 off coupons. I bought 40 coupons online for around $4 so I got 40 pounds of ground pork for $4. Also, Target at one point had $2 off coupons for their Sutton & Dodge steaks. Well, for two weeks they had either the chuck steaks or the sirloin steaks on sale for $2/pound so I bought several packages that were around a pound each, used the coupon and paid only pennies for each package. All this meat came in handy when I did a big once-a-month cooking session a few weeks ago.

Couponing has turned out to be not as much work as I initially thought it was going to be and I'm enjoying it. It is kind of like a game to see how much I can save.