Wife, Mother, Homemaker

Today, as part of my February mission, I'm going to Love My Friends. So many of you have asked me to show you how I save so much money at the grocery store and today I'm going to tell you how I do it. (BTW - this is also how I Love My Family - saving money at the grocery store means more money for spending on fun stuff!)

Now listen friends, this is not a task to be taken lightly. It does take some time and effort, more so in the beginning, but once you get the hang of it - it's a piece of cake!

First off, you MUST purchase your weekly Sunday newspaper. If you have a family of more than 3 people, buy 2 so you will have double the coupons. Set aside the grocery store ads and coupons, then choose a day that is the least hectic (notice I didn't say calm, not hectic or outright boring - mostly because we don't have those days around here!) So pick the LEAST hectic day to sit down and cut them out. Or better yet, hand them over to your kids and let them get to work with those scissors! When it's all been done, you should have a pile like this:

The next, and probably most important thing, is to have some sort of organization system. Some people like to organize by expiration date, but I prefer to organize by the way my store is set up. I use a small 4x6 photo album with clear sleeves to hold the coupons. I label the front of each clear sleeve with the name of each department, beginning with what I see first when I walk in the store: Bakery (Bread, Tortillas, etc.), next would be produce (not a lot of coupons here, mainly for bagged salads, dressings, etc.) If you have a good visual image in your head of what your store looks like, it's not hard to do. Just try to be as detailed as possible. If you only have one sleeve that says Dairy, you're going to overload that sleeve, so I break my Dairy department into Milk, Juice, Coffee Creamer; Eggs, Cheese, Butter; Cookies, Brownies, Pillsbury Products; Sour Cream, Yogurt . . . well, you get the picture, right?

After you have your coupons all cut out, you're ready to sit down and make out your list for the week. If you're a busy mom like most, you probably have a few crock pot or take-out nights planned. (BTW - if you have them planned, you can save a lot more money than if you just pull into the nearest McDonald's without even thinking about it!) Lots of restaurants place coupons in the paper, and many also have Kids Eat Free Nights - so if you know baseball and dance are falling on the same night this week - have that in your plan and you won't be breaking the bank! You can find local Kids Eat Free Restaurant deals here. My favorite is the TX Roadhouse - yum yum! Sorry, I digress, back to the meal planning. So you sit down with your handy grocery store ads

and your calendar and you start planning. Now listen my friends, we all know that when we go into the grocery store we tell ourselves I am ONLY going to get what I absolutely NEED! Right? Do you say it to yourself? I know I did for YEARS. Well, you have to get over this mindset or you will never save the kind of money I do. I wish I had a copy of one of my best trips - the cashier rang me up and the total for my overflowing basket of groceries was $230. After I gave her my Kroger card and the stack of coupons that made the woman behind me roll her eyes, it came down to $107. Believe me, by the time it was over, she wanted to know the secret!

You have to learn to buy the things that you may not need today, but will definitely use tomorrow, when you have the best coupons and the best sale is happening. Here's the best example I've used that I can think of:

Say I have a bathroom drawer full of razors. You wouldn't think I would put that on my list, right? Wrong! Kroger has my brand on sale Buy 1, Get 1 Free. But I don't even want to pay for 1 package - so I get out my trusty coupon album, find my Buy 1, Get 1 Free coupon, and I come home with $14 worth of razors that I paid $0 for. Now isn't that nice? Gee, I sure think so! At our local theater, my 3 kids and I can get into a daytime showing for that price. Woo hoo! You just have to apply that mentality to everything you're shopping for. You may not be able to use it for bread or milk, but you rarely find coupons for those items anyway.

Ok, so we're back at our table, with our ad and coupons. You're going to look to see what meat is on sale that week. (I am no longer a meat eater, which is another story, but when I was, it's how I started my planning). There are no coupons here either, but if the roasts are on sale for $4 vs $13, you're going to buy 3 even if you don't plan on cooking them this week. It's like seeing a sale sign that says 3 for the price of 1! Plan your meals around the meat specials, but use your coupons and sale ads to help you. If the chicken is on sale, as are the frozen veggies, campbell's soups, and rice - grab your coupons for those items, stock up, and you'll have a pantry ready to throw a quick casserole into the crockpot.

It's going to take some practice, but you can do it if you decide you're tired of letting Kroger, Wal-mart or H-E-B have all your hard-earned money! My family took our very first "out of Texas" vacation this year, complete with airplane rides, hotel accomodations and the best time we've ever had as a family. My husband didn't get a raise and we didn't stop spending money on things we wanted. I am certain we were able to do it because of my ambition in this area which most people don't realize they can actually have some control over. Our food budget (which includes groceries and eating out) has decreased from between $800 - $1,200 a month (which is just sickening to me friends!), to around $600 for a family of 5. Don't think for one second it's because I am no longer eating meat that I am saving - my family still eats it up like there won't be any around tomorrow!

Well friends, I hope you'll try to keep a little more of this:

so maybe you can go to more places like this: