My next step is to start using coupons and matching those coupons to sale items. This will include stockpiling what I can. I did a bit of stockpiling back in November and bought around 40-4 packs of White Cloud toilet paper for $1 each. There are 10 packages left so I’ll be looking for new deals soon.

Often times you can print coupons right from the internet to use at the store. To conserve money set your printer options to black and white. Here are some of the sites I’m starting to use on a regular basis:

www. coupons.com (I’ve applied to have a coupon.com side bar so you could just come visit me and also print coupons–yea!!!)
www.smartsource.com
www.redplum.com

It also doesn’t hurt to go to your favorite food manufacturers and enroll in their newsletter. They often send customers coupons via email.

My favorite is Betty Crocker. Usually lots of useable coupons.

Sometimes even your store has coupons. I know I can print coupons at Meijer.com and those can be matched with manufacturer coupons to double my savings.

There are also some fantastic blogs out there that focus just on saving money. The ones I like include:

www.sarahsdeals.blogspot.com–I really like Sarah’s site. She lives about 2 hours South of me and blogs about stores in my area.

www.centsible-sawyer.com–lots of good info. Denise includes stores that are popular in the Southern states including Bi-Lo, Safeway, and EarthFare. She also has a great feature right now “Organic on a Budget” –a must read for anyone interested in organic foods.

www.macombmoneysavers.com–I’m new to reading this particular blog, but so far I like it.

If you are new to couponing all this information can seem overwhelming. Just take it slow…one step at a time and before you know it you’ll be saving some serious $$$ at the grocery store.

How do you save money at the grocery store?

On Thursday I went through my coupons and only grabbed the $1 coupons of things that we would use or that I needed more of in the stockpile. These coupons were from Sunday papers and the internet.

On Sunday, Alan and I got up early headed over to Krogers to go shopping. It took us about an hour to go through the store and match coupon to product. I’m pretty disappointed in Kroger’s prices. Almost everything was more expensive than Meijer or WalMart BUT by using the coupon I ended up getting a hell of a deal.

Here’s the details:

Subtotal: $152.21 before store or manufacturer coupons (gasp, choke…yikes, I seen that and was a little concerned…I didn’t realize how much I had bought apparently)

Manufacturer coupons:-$97.86 (it’s an odd number because I used free coupons for the cat food and some coupons only double to the price of the product so you don’t earn any overage).

Kroger card savings: -$15.06

Kroger Gift Card compliments of Jolly Mom contest: -$25.00

Drum roll please……………..

Total out of pocket cost: $14.29 and that includes 2 Sunday papers that I didn’t have coupons for

Here’s my take (it was hard to get everything in the photo):

A quick run down:
14 bags of Purina cat food (which our dog, Kira, loves—go figure) I used Free coupons on these.
1 box Ritz
2 large containers of Maxwell House coffee
8 individual mac & cheese
4 cans of Pringles
1 package Archway cookies
1 box of Bandaids
1 Windex
1 Fantastic
4 Snickers
1 Detroit News
1 Flint Journal
1 Hunts ketchup
2 Kraft bbq sauce
1 French worcheshire sauce
1 Baked lays (not pictured–those ended up being road trip food )
2 A-1 steak sauce
1 Kraft ranch
2 Saltine crackers
2 Ortega taco seasoning packets
1 Wheat Thins
2 boxes of Graham Crackers
1 Mr Clean
3 Hunts pudding snack packs
2 boxes of Triscuits
1 Peter Pan peanut butter
2 boxes Velveeta mac & cheese
2 Colgate toothpaste

In addition to my printed and Sunday coupons I also used a few coupons that were downloaded to my Kroger card. Specifically, Cellfire and the P&Gesaver. These download coupons are available for a variety of stores…check to see if one near you is participating.

Have any great coupon deals or stories you’d like to share…leave me a comment.

During my blog surfing I happened to stumble across a blog that was giving away a $25 Kroger gift card. Now, I don’t know about you, but any help with the grocery bill is greatly appreciated. I figured it couldn’t hurt to enter, so enter I did. Fortuantely for me random.org chose my comment number and I won. A big THANK YOU goes out to www.jollymom.com for hosting this contest.

The nearest Kroger is just over an hour away. You might think its a bit crazy (see blog title) to enter to win, BUT this Kroger also doubles dollar coupons and I make occasional trips just to stock up. My goal is to see how far I can stretch that $25 bucks. In a couple weeks I’ll be making that trip. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Kroger will have a great sale that week.

Enjoy!!