I am NOT a coupon clipper.
It’s not that I don’t want to be… it’s just that I LITERALLY don’t know how. Other than Costco coupons, I’m pretty much clueless.
You see… Costco SENDS me their coupons nicely organized in a booklet. I then go through and cut out what our family uses MOST. I always save money doing that. However… groceries are TOTALLY different. We don’t get the paper (who does anymore) so I can’t get coupons that way. I can’t honestly say I look very hard either. Apparently, I’m LAZY when it comes to bargain hunting.
This is what I usually do: I get all my canned & generic stuff at Winco. Winco is awesome because they sell Red Mill and other organic brands of baking needs and cereal in bulk. I then get all my fresh fruits, veggies & meat at New Seasons or Whole Foods. When it’s NOT Winter, I get all my veggies at the Farmer’s Market which is SO much cheaper!!!
I saw that Heather Whittaker saved over $110 the other day using Southern Savers. Do we have something like that in the Northwest?
I have a friend who drives to 6 stores in one day to get the best price. Um… I don’t have time to drive from store to store. In my rig… by the time I DRIVE to 6 stores, I’ve spent the money in gas that I would have saved on groceries. Also, my boys just about lose it when I drag them to any more than TWO stores… but I’m ready to save $100 every time I get groceries.
I need help friends!!! What do you do?
The Grocery Game is the only one I’ve heard of in the NW. Several of my friends save 60% & sometimes have the grocery store owe THEM money. I’m gonna join once I move.
The real question is: Do you say Q-Pons or Coo-Pons?
And “Schmoupons” is my new favorite word.
oooh… Mandy – checking it out now.
Crystal – I say both… but I think I lean more towards “Q-pons” most of the time. Is that weird?
Ooo…Safeway is having a .75 sale right now. You could get online & find manufacturere’s printable coupons & get some of those things for WAY less…especially if you could find double coupons.
Okay, so I don’t do coupons either. I too, don’t have time to run all over…but the idea is very interesting to me so I have done a little reading/researching about it. I was a part of the grocery game a few years ago and it’s good if you stick with it. I just kind of got overwhelmed. But you do have to pay a small membership fee of maybe a dollar or two a week. I just heard about another website that pretty much does the same thing called couponmom.com and it’s free. It seems pretty good, but I haven’t done anything with it yet.
I’m still “old school” and get the paper. I still enjoy it AND you get the Sunday coupons and Tuesday’s Fooday. For me, finding online coupons seems WAY to confusing and overwhelming. I might have to look at “The Grocery Game”, tho!
I, like you, am a pretty tried and true Winco shopper for basic staples. I usually go to Safeway for meat/fruits/veggies. (BTW.. their organic veggies sometimes are less $ than non-organic ones.. i usually buy organic no matter what). Foodday usually has a great Safeway add. Sometimes even a “$10 off if you spend $50+” coupon. I actually saved $67 once there with coupons/club card!! Some say they are way more expensive. I’d say maybe on somethings, but when they have sales.. they do it well!
I agree it can be hard and frustrating. I try to do the best I can to save, but also know that some months I will spend more on food no matter how hard I try . Sometimes I go and don’t use any coupons… and I am learning to be ok with that.
Good luck!
Jenni-
We do all of our shopping at Bales Thriftway, its close, and they have a great organic house brand. They do in store coupons in Tuesdays food day, which is free. Then on Sundays I stop and get the paper, it’s 2.00. Because Bales has double coupons, if I only clip 4 manufactures coupons from the paper it pays for its self. Also they do customer appreciation coupons at Bales(in the food day) from time to time, which saves you 10 dollars off your purchase.
We have also started to create our weekly menu, yes I shop every week, out of the add. I have found we are still eating healthy and it forces me to think out side of the box and try new things.
In the summer I will stop buying my produce form the store and too start buying from the farmers Market.
The Tuesday Food Day paper is free and should be coming to your door automatically…save it for that weeks coupons. We then combine that with Grocery Game (Safeway is our option) and buy the Sunday paper on Saturday night to do the coupon part after kids are asleep. I don’t clip the coupons right away, I label the flyer with a postit with the date and then the game list tells me which flyer of which date to look for the coupon. I can do a five page list in less than 30 mins and just keep the flyers in a file. I pull out old flyers every 4 months or so that are all expired.
Only drawback to Grocery Game is that they don’t have WF or NS or TJ’s as local options so you have to figure that out on your own. But still you can get some good organic stuff at the other stores. We also do produce at farmer’s markets as soon as the season starts.
Oh also adding, my grocery bill yesterday was 47 bucks for a total of 178 dollars worth of stuff shelf price and I agree with some others, their organics can be better priced than non and we take advantage of that. I think apples were like 98cents for organics a week or two ago.
Wow, ladies… these are GREAT pointers. I’m totally on it!
You don’t necessarily need to get the paper for the coupons. When you get to the grocery store, go to the customer service counter first thing and ask for their weekly ad. They generally have lots of copies for people just like us who don’t get the paper (because why would you pay for ads and coupons?).
FYI… Fooday today had a pretty good article about this very topic.. lots of good coupons avenues and savings tips. Thought you might want to know!
I mooch off my sister, she is the coupon/savings queen. She blogs about it here:
http://workingmommyto3.blogspot.com/
There are also a lot of great links on her blog to other savings queens with great tips and leads on savings.
My sister does not go to multiple stores, it’s usually Costco and our local grocery Meijer. Sometimes she’ll go to Walgreens, but mostly it’s just Meijer and Costco.
Good luck!
I was excited to see the post from Kristi about couponmom.com, but it doesn’t look like they have anything for Oregon. I do know several people that use the Grocerygame.com and love it. You can do a trial for $1 and then it’s like $8 every 3 months. FYI