Tuesday, February 17, 2009

~Do you clip coupons?~

In looking for some ways to save money, I've turned to our grocery bill. We don't spend a ton on groceries, and in fact, we make almost everything from "scratch". But there are still coupons out there that I know I could put to use. In the past I have purchased the Sunday paper and clipped a few coupons here and there, but I've never subscribed to the paper, so it was always a separate trip out to get the paper, which isn't very convenient!

Last night we went grocery shopping at Meijer. For those of you who don't have Meijer stores, the closest description would be a Super Wal*Mart. But in my opinion, Meijer is much better than Wal*Mart. =) The only coupons I had were Meijer promotional coupons. We had gotten them on previous grocery shopping trips (they print when you check out), and they were set to expire, so we had to use them or lose them.

I was so excited to look at my receipt and see that I saved nearly $42 by combining sales and the Meijer coupons!!! I am far from posting a picture of a table full of food and saying, "Look what I got for $1.89", but I was still very happy to have saved so much money!

So far, our money-saving tactics are:
To go to the store after 8 p.m., so we can hit the meat counter. They close at 8, and put meat out at greatly-reduced prices.
To go through the weekly ad and buy as much as possible on sale.
To stock up when something is on a good sale.

I'd like to add couponing to my list of tactics! Do you coupon? are you "gung-ho" about it? or just casually interested in it?

I know that a lot of people save money by shopping at CVS and Wal-greens, but I'll be honest. I'm not interested in the amount of work it takes to do this, and I'm really not interested in the products that I see people saving money on/getting for free. This is just a personal preference, because I know a lot of people save a lot of money doing this! It just isn't for me! :-)

4 comments:

Susan said...

Since we do the bulk of our shopping in the US, and I don't live in the US, I don't get many coupons to use there. I do print some out from coupons.com, but they're mostly for things we don't use - so that's still very limited. The papers here don't do much of the coupon inserts in the paper. So . . . my biggest way to save money here is to shop at Super Wal-Mart in the States! LOL

When we lived in Texas, I did use coupons quite a bit, but not to the extent that I see some ladies do on their blogs. I'm like you on the CVS stuff - too much work for stuff we don't use that much.

I am trying to scale back even on our monthly grocery trip. I'm trying to cut it back to under $300, including Costco, but I don't know if I can do it or not.

Anonymous said...

This was an interesting post, Tammy, because I feel the same way! I've been finding that a lot of the products people tend to get for their "$1.89" are processed foods, junk foods, and fairly wasteful convenience products. I'm on a tight budget, but I try to eat healthy and not pollute when I can avoid it. I do shop at the discount stores in my area, but I don't go crazy over coupons. I'm glad to see a like-minded shopper!

Also, I hope you're doing well -- things are about to get really exciting for you soon!

-Heather

Anonymous said...

Hi Tammy ~ Yes, I clip coupons, file coupons, forget I have coupons, then throw them all out when I see they've expired!

I shop a lot at Costco, and they don't take coupons since the price is already low. I'm not into CVS either, but I do enjoy double coupons at my grocery store (Martin's which is a Giant brand store) that is, if I've remembered to take them with me. :)

Anonymous said...

I see Deb mentioned it already, but watch for double coupon days or know when your stores have them. That'll save you. We don't clip because I don't have the time to worry about all that stuff. I've tried a couple times. Oooo...if I find it...I have a document that might help you out. Of course, it may be stuff you know already. :)