More Ways to Save on Groceries

Huge Grocery Savings with Low Cost Meals, I listed places to find recipes for meals that have a low cost per serving. From menu’s that are only $70 a week to servings that cost $.45. Yet this isn’t the only way to save money on groceries.

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In a pervious article,

            The next way to save money is those time consuming coupons. I never thought much about coupons because $.75 cents off of three boxes of Hamburger Helper just never seem like it was worth it. Yet, I took the time to actually see if coupons would make a difference.

            There are a couple ways I can go about using coupons. First, the regular “cut and clip” coupons you find in magazines, newspapers, and sometimes even new products. While it seems time consuming, it does pay off in the long run. So I took all the coupons that I had and put them in a binder. Some people like to put them in a little folder box, but I like a binder. I can just flip through the pages and see what I have.

            Next, I have a City Market card. Now, I don’t know if these really give you the savings that they say they do or if the products are just marked up enough to make you feel like you are saving. Either way, I live in a remote area, so I don’t have much to choose from that doesn’t use this system. For that reason, it really does save me money. Yet, the one thing that I liked about the cards in there are several website that you can add Ecoupons to them. This was my next step. I went online and added all my Ecoupons to my card.

            Once I have completed that, I move to the weekly ads for City Market to see what is on sale this week. I make a list of items that I can use or we can eat, generally the really good deals. Hamburger when it comes on sale for 10 for $10 deals (which I like the best).

            So I know have my coupon binder in front of me, a list of the available Ecoupons, as well as the good deals from the weekly ads. Using these three, I make a week menu. The great thing about this is I can generally find coupons to match the sales plus the ability to double stack coupons with Ecoupons. This is the biggest.

For example, Hamburger Helper cost me $4.95 for three boxes, which is two meals, but I used the $.75 clipped coupon and the $.75 Ecoupon. So, my three boxes cost me $3.45 or $1.15 a piece. There are two reasons I dislike Hamburger Helper. One, it totally lacks nutrition. Two, the hamburger to go with it is expensive where I am at $3.75 a pound. This means for one box of Hamburger Helper and one pound of hamburger I paid $4.90 for a meal for two and $9.80 for a meal for five. This defeats the purpose of saving money, but the example does illustrate the point. A better move is to use ground turkey for $1.25 and only pay $2.40 for two or $4.80 for five. That way you are saving money. Yet, you are still lacking nutrition, but it does show the double stack of Coupons and Ecoupons. Just remember that not all stores let you do this.

In the end of my one week trip to the store, I saved $7.35 in coupons and $8.54 on value card sales, which is a total of $15.89. For me, that equals to $63.56 saved every month. If I choose for that to go into a Christmas fund, then I would have $762 at Christmas time to spend. Of course, that can go for a lot of things then just Christmas.  

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