Menus and freezers and budgets, oh my! (Part 1)

Anyone will tell you that meal planning is the key to saving money at the grocery store. As far as I can tell there are two main strategies for menu planning, as it relates to saving money.

The first strategy is to plan an entire week's worth of meals before you go to the grocery store. Make a list of all the ingredients you will need for your dinners, as well as anything you may need to make breakfasts and lunches. Buy only those things.

The idea here is that you save money by avoiding impulse buys, by avoiding extra trips to the store mid-week when you realize you forgot something (extra trips which inevitably lead to impulse buys), and by avoiding food waste when you buy something because it looks good but have absolutely no idea or intention of using it.

You can save even more money if you make your meal plan with your grocery ad next to you, planning the main ingredients around what happens to already be on sale. You end up with a little repetition of meat this way, unless you have a lot of great sales, but you can save big.

This is a great way to grocery shop. It is efficient, frugal, and can be very successful. But it's not what I do.

The buy ahead principle

Instead, my goal is to have everything I need for an entire week's worth of meals before I go to the grocery store. On Friday, before I go shopping, I survey my freezer and pantry and make a meal plan based on what I already have. Some of the meals are things that I've cooked ahead and stashed in my freezer. Some of the meals are quick cooking staples in our house, or easy crockpot recipes, that I just keep the main ingredients of onhand. But the idea is before I go to the store, I should be able to count at least 7 easily available dinners in my house. I double check all the extra ingredients and sides for each meal, and add any that I'm missing to my list, but it is a very small part of my weekly grocery list.

Why?

There are a few main reasons for this. The first is that I'm generally just not good at sticking to a plan. When I count my 7 meals of the week, I know I won't get to all of them. I'll probably have a leftover night. I may have a sandwich night. We may go out. DH or I may decide we don't want to eat anything I planned and just make a frozen pizza. If I bought only the week's worth of meals, I would lose that flexibility.

The biggest reason, though, is saving money. I try to buy things only when they are on sale. Other than fresh fruit and milk, which we buy almost every week, almost nothing enters my house that wasn't at least 50% off. This saves me big at the grocery store.

How?

The basic principle here is that you need to start small. Every week, you can add just one extra meal to your freezer stash. This way you won't go crazy overbudget or make yourself crazy with all the cooking.

Then as you start to develop a freezer stash, you'll be able to spend more of your budget on stockpile items and less on weekly need items. If I know I have 5 containers of chili, 5 containers of slow cooked taco beef, and 3 lasagnas in my freezer? Then each week's meals become very easy to plan.

The plan is to write part 2 about how I shop, and part 3 about how I assemble freezer meals, and possible a part 4 with recipes. But I'm not good at plans. Leave a comment letting me know how you meal plan, or what you would like to know about my meal planning and shopping, and we'll play it by ear, okay?

Free stuff to donate!

Are you getting geared up for the Stamp Out Hunger food drive? What's that, you say, you have nothing to donate? Here are some things you can pick up this week for free that your local food bank would love to have.

Walgreens

Carefree Pantiliners are on sale for $0.99.
Use $1/1 from last Sunday's Smart Source coupon insert.

Tylenol Precise on sale for $7.99. (This is either a cream or a heating pad and is not with the pain relievers in my store, so you know.
Use $5/1 printable coupon.
AND use the $3/1 store coupon from the Walgreens May Coupon Booklet (found in the front of the store)

Nature Made Calcium 120 ct is on sale for $5. This was not marked down in my store but still rung up for $5!
Use $5 printable coupon on the Walgreens facebook page


Target

Aquafresh Extreme Clean .8oz Travel Size regular price .97 (In the travel aisle)
Use $1/1 Any Aquafresh Extreme Clean Product HERE

Reach Floss $1
Use $1/1 Printable coupon (no longer available)

CVS
Similac Ready to Feed Formula (32 oz) – $4.99
Use $5.00/1 Similac Product from 4/3 Smart Source insert

Thanks to Coupon Katarina and Totally Target for finding these deals. If you have more time and more coupons, check out their awesome sites!

Don't forget to join the Facebook cause to ask Campbells to donate a pound of food and like Valpak to donate another $1

Saving Money on Groceries Part 3: Coupon basics

Coupons are pretty hot in the media right now, what with extreme couponing shows and commercials for printable coupon sites. There's a reason for that. Grocery coupons are an outstanding way to save money on the things your family needs and even to get things for free. They help you lower your budget, make it possible to afford treats that would otherwise be out of reach, and even sometimes help you to bless others with your abundance by donating some of your free products.

But coupons only help you save money when you use them wisely. Coupons are inherently a marketing tactic, and companies only give them out because they know they can convince you to buy their products. If you buy everything you have coupons for, you will usually end up spending more money on your weekly groceries - and probably end up with a bunch of junk you don't want to eat or use.

My personal grocery coupon strategy is essentially to acquire two types of coupons: coupons for things that I buy on a regular basis, and coupons for things that will eventually be free.

"Need" coupons If an item is on your regular weekly grocery list, and you're going to buy it anyway, then using a coupon for it clearly and immediately saves you money. For example, my family buys milk, yogurt, and orange juice almost every week, so whenever I see a coupon for one of those things, I grab as many as I can possibly get. Even if the item is not on sale, but you need it, you can use one coupon and buy one like you normally would, essentially putting a dollar back in your pocket.

As a more specific example: we generally buy one of three brands of orange juice, depending on which one is on sale. Recently, there was a $1 off coupon for one of our preferred brands. The coupon made the regular price of that orange juice less than the sale price of any of the others, so I got about 10 copies of the coupon. Then, every week, I bought one bottle of orange juice like normal but with the coupon instead of the sale. When the brand I had the coupon for went on sale, I bought 3 of them. Then, the next week, I didn't need to buy any and I could make it until the next sale. (When the coupon was about to expire, I bought up a couple extra, even though it wasn't a sale week. It still saved me money over what I would normally pay.)

Did I try to buy 100? No way. It would still have cost me a lot of money, and how could I possibly have used that much orange juice before it expired? Where would I store it? But 3 was a reasonable level for me, and enough to get me to the next sale. It was also an amount that fit into my grocery budget, which is really important to remember.

Coupons for need items like bread, milk, juice, and even meat and produce do exist, you just have to keep an eye out.

Free and stockpile coupons There are some coupons that I always make sure to acquire extras of simply because I know that, by my store's sales cycle, they will eventually be free. A 50 cent off coupon for mustard, for example, will yield you free bottles at many stores that double coupons. Whenever that coupon came out, I made sure to grab a few. When the sale made it free, I would pick up 2 or 3. You could choose to get more, provided your store doubles more than 3 like coupons, but you need to think of what you'll do with them. Do you have room to store them? Do you plan to donate them? Do you go through more than 2 or 3 bottles of mustard before the sale and coupon come around again?

This is how people manage to "never pay for" certain items. I know at the stores I used to shop at, I didn't pay for mustard for years. Other items you can consistently get for free in most places include hot sauce, salad dressing, toothpaste, floss, and 4 packs of toilet paper. There are regional variations, but the more you keep track of your store's prices and sales cycles, the more you'll start to get a feel for which coupons are most useful for you to stock up on.

Free items are also a great way to get some treats for your family for free. Especially when a product is relatively new, it's often easy to find a coupon that will make it free. I remember having a shelf full of Betty Crocker Warm Delights when they first came out, none of which I paid for. I probably wouldn't pay for them, honestly, but they made a nice treat if they were free. So, if you see high value coupons for new items, it makes sense to save them for at least a little while to see whether you can get them for free or very cheap.

I talked a lot today about using multiples of coupons. Next week I'll explain a little more about where you can get those coupons.

Good luck and happy savings!

Saving Money on Groceries Part 2: Lists

Once you have a handle on your budget, pricepoints, pantry, and repertoire, you can finally get into the nitty gritty of actual shopping. There are two main types of list that you need for good grocery savings:

A need list

Your need list will consist of all the things that you absolutely need to buy this week. To begin with, it helps to make a really detailed meal plan: list every single main dish and side item you will need for every breakfast, lunch and dinner you will eat this week. Include snacks that your family has to have. Then go to your pantry and see what you already have. Make a list of every item that you need to buy to make your meal plan work. You don't want to have to run back out to the store mid-week - you'll waste gas and probably spend extra on impulse buys.

Now, how can this help you save money? Well a few ways. First of all, preventing all the extra trips is huge. Also, for a lot of people, having meals planned and on hand can prevent those quick fast food meals that add to your budget really fast. Even if you get a day or two off, you can always look back at your initial plan and know that you have everything you need for enough complete meals for the week.

The big savings come, though, when you make this list strategically. Start to plan your meals around both your pantry and the grocery ad. For example, if pork chops are on sale, and you have applesauce in the pantry, you have the makings of a great meal. You just need to add a vegetable and maybe a starch and you're good to go.

A stockpile list

In addition to looking through your grocery ad for items that would make good dinners this week, start to look ahead to the future. If you have an idea of what your family regularly uses, and you know the normal pricepoint for each of those items, you can start to stock up when the items are cheaper than that. For instance, if your family eats a lot of pasta, and pasta is on sale for half your normal buy price, buy as many as you can afford! Over time, two things will happen: as your pantry gets fuller, your need list will get shorter and your buy prices will get lower. As your need list gets shorter, you will have more money to buy stockpile items. As your pantry gets fuller, you will be able to wait for lower and lower prices, eventually getting to the point where you can get most items for close to free. This is when you'll start to see the biggest grocery savings.

Next time I'll talk more about how to stockpile, with coupons and matchups, and some great resources to help you do that.

Saving on groceries, part 1: The Basics

As part of my resolution to save money this year, I wanted to work on tackling my grocery budget a little, and I thought I would run a mini-series on ways to spend less on groceries. Before we can get started on juicy insider tricks, though, we have to make sure we have our basics in line. Make sure you consider all of the following:

Your budget. A lot of bloggers talk about starting with your budget as if that were an easy task. Before you can cut back on your grocery spending, you need to know three things: how much you can spend, how much you do spend, and how much you want to spend. If you haven’t been actively budgeting so far, this may involve a lot of math and spreadsheets, and at least sitting down with some receipts or bank statements. You can’t just take someone else’s grocery budget and shoot for that because everyone’s situation is different. You need to actually do all the work.

Your priorities. Is it important to you to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables? To have meat every day? To buy some things organic? Or are you just trying to get everyone fed? Wherever you are, and whatever you want to do, is okay, but it’s going to affect how much you can save and how much you need to spend. This is one reason why comparing yourself to other people is not useful.
Your repertoire. What do you and your family actually eat? What products do you use? If you regularly make only 5 different meals, and they are affordable for you and it works for your family, there’s really nothing particularly wrong with that. Use that list of meals to make your grocery list and stop buying stuff you aren’t going to use, no matter how cheap it is. However, if you are interested in trying new recipes, you can save money by planning meals around the sales. I love allrecipes ingredient search for this; it allows you to search for recipes based on what ingredients you want included (or not included).

Your pantry. If you are starting from scratch and don’t have any food, you are obviously going to spend a little more on staples than is someone who has a fully stocked pantry. If you have a stocked pantry, take inventory. Make sure you aren’t rebuying things just because you can’t find them, and see whether certain things are accumulating because you are buying them without any real purpose or intention.

Your pricepoints. One reason that it is useless to compare yourself or your budget to other people is that grocery prices vary so widely from one area of the country to another. If you're just starting out, you could consider making a pricebook - essentially, you track the prices of your most commonly purchased items over time and at different stores. If you don't have the time for that, at least develop an awareness for the "normal" price and the "good" price for the things you buy all the time. There's no way to know whether a deal saves you money unless you know what you're paying now.

Your time. How much time do you really want to invest in lowering your grocery bill? Do you have the time to go to several stores a week? To dig through forums, or visit a few blogs? Remember to search for that balance in your life instead of trying to meet someone else’s challenge.

So where am I in all this? I currently have a pretty well stocked pantry and a pretty fixed repertoire of meals, but I’d like to try a few new meals. I have a lot of different spices that I would like to plan some meals around. I’m currently spending about $300 a month, but would like to modestly lower that to $250, while keeping as much of my food natural and organic as possible. I am ready to start shopping at more than one store a week if I need to, as long as I can get in and out quickly.

Want to join in? What are your grocery goals?

Where I get coupons

I originally wrote this for a friend of mine who wanted to know where I kept finding high value coupons and how I managed to get great deals, but I thought some of my readers might benefit from it too.

Word of Mouth coupon sites (that mail out full size products and coupons for free products)

Bzzagent Sends big packs of free stuff, but you have to take surveys to qualify for campaigns, and then report back on how you spread the word to earn points and get into a higher qualifying bracket.

Psst Randomly will send you coupons for General Mills products.

Kraft First Taste Same, but for Kraft. Also sometimes has high value printable coupons on the website.

Vocal Point Kind of like Bzzagent, except you don't need to report back. I have a hard time finding offers on their website, but sometimes they send stuff out randomly.

SC Johnson Regularly gives out SC Johnson gift packs that come with lots of coupons


Coupon clipping sites

These are coupon clipping services that charge a handling fee for multiples of newspaper coupons.

The Coupon Master
Coupons Unlimited



Blogs I read to find out about new deals, etc.

Money Saving Mom posts deals for lots of grocery, drug and big box stores
Freebies 4 Mom mostly posts freebies, but also posts rebates and printable coupon deals

Some tips to save money shopping for organic food

The more we hear about our food and the entire food production industry, the more a lot of us start to get scared. Buying more organic food is a great option to protect both your family's health and the health of the planet, but it can be very expensive. It is, however, very possible to eat more organic food without breaking the budget by implementing some simple (and some less simple) strategies.

• Eat less meat and dairy. Probably the easiest way to save money shopping for organic food is to eat less meat and dairy - a proposition that isn't very appealing to most people. Meat and dairy, however, have some of the highest concentrations of any food we buy, and also tend to have the biggest price differential between conventional and organic. It doesn't make sense to feed your family organic carrots and conventional hamburgers, but it also isn't viable for many families to eat organic, grass fed beef every night. The best thing to do is to shoot for a balance. Consider having more meatless meals, so that you can afford to splurge on the organic stuff when you do eat meat, or at least to switch one meat meal a month to organic.
  
  
• Join a CSA. CSA stands for community supported agriculture. It is basically a system where customers by a "share" in a farm's produce for a season. Members pay upfront, giving farmers much needed startup capital, and in turn often get first pick of the produce for the rest of the season. This can be (although isn't always) the most affordable way to buy local, organic food. Check out Local Harvest to see if there is a CSA in your area.
  
  
• Look beyond Whole Paycheck. Most local grocery stores, and even Walmart, offer organic food these days. Ethical issues aside, shopping at these larger stores can be a great way to save money while still getting organic.
  
  
• Buy in bulk. Natural food stores and some grocery stores often have bulk bins for grains, fruit, and some other products. Generally this is less expensive than buying the same organic products pre-packaged.
  
  
• Cook more from scratch. While organic Oreos or organic mac and cheese can be very appealing, try to focus on buying whole, unprocessed organic products and creating your own meals from them. This will save you money and be healthier (and probably more fun!)
  
  
• Use coupons. Whether or not you are a coupon queen, you can probably benefit from organic food coupons. Because organic food companies tend to be smaller, they don't often have coupons in the Sunday paper because they are very pricey to run. About Frugal Living has a great list of organic coupons that you can print or request online, but go ahead and try emailing any organic company you enjoy. The smaller companies are much more likely to mail coupons directly to you if you ask for them. Also, Go organic for Earth Day and Mambo Sprouts both offer booklets with coupons for a number of different brands of organic food.
  
  
• Focus your organic dollars. If you have read much about organic food, you've probably heard of the dirty dozen, the twelve most pesticide-ridden products. If you can't afford to buy everything organic, focus on them. Also, consider changing your eating patterns. Some foods are much less expensive in their organic form than others. Eating more carrots and fewer apples, for example, could save you a ton of money.

How to Grocery coupon Week 4

This is the third in my series on how to use grocery coupons. Be sure to also check out week 1 and week 2.

By now, you should be building up a stockpile and a decent pantry. You should see your need list shrinking, which frees up more money for your sales list and stockpile list. You should also have a somewhat decent coupon file by now. Keep your total grocery budget at the same level, but change the proportion of needs: sales. You should be spending more money on stockpiling every week. Also, as your price book fills up, you should start to recognize which sales are good sales and which are not. Something may deserve to be on a “sale” list but not a “stockpile” list.

Remember, you won’t see the big savings until you have your pantry completely stocked, thus allowing you to buy only those items which are on your sale list and for which you have a coupon, often reducing the price to almost zero.


Consider adding these tricks to your arsenal:

Trade coupons or buy from a coupon clipping service. This is a must if you want to get those 90% savings you read about. Your goal is to get multiples of coupons for items on your stockpile list (and I don’t mean 2 or 3, I mean 10 or 12), so that when canned corn or cereal or granola bars go on sale, you can use all your coupons at once and get these items for pennies.

Shop at a warehouse store. I put this back here in week 4 for one major reason: you have a pricebook now. This will allow you to see what is actually a good deal and what is not. As you develop a good coupon file, you may find this tip to be less and less useful. Warehouse stores often don’t accept coupons, and if they do probably don’t double them. You’ll often find better prices at the grocery store. Make sure that if you are doing your stockpiling at a warehouse store you are still staying within your grocery budget.

Sign up for companies’ mailing lists. Write to or call companies to tell them you like their products. You would be amazed at the coupons that companies mail to loyal customers. They are generally much better than the coupons in your newspaper.

Cleaning out my apartment: donating

The three bags of health and beauty items above went to my local food bank yesterday. The bags mostly consist of shampoos and toothpastes, but there is also some lotion and some packs of feminine products in there too. Most of this is stuff I purchased for free with grocery coupons, and which has been languishing under the sink in my guest bathroom for months. I feel lighter for it being gone, and I have all that extra storage space back, but mostly I feel good because it's going to go to good use.

If you donate goods to a food bank, soup kitchen, or shelter, you can deduct the full value (i.e., not what you paid with coupons and rebates, but what someone else would have to pay) from your taxes. Since we don't itemize deductions, I don't worry about this, but if you do make sure to get a receipt.

This is my first bit of progress on my goals for summer. Try to keep me honest at making steady progress!

How to grocery coupon - Week 2

Do everything you did week 1, and:

Plan
Begin a pricebook. From your receipts and sales ads, keep track of the best prices on various items. Create a page for each category of items you buy and record the price, size, brand, store, and date. You will eventually look for trends in this, but right now, just record it.

Prepare
Clip more coupons. This week you’re going to start clipping coupons for items that you don’t buy all the time too, but might like to buy. Don’t use these coupons yet but start filing them. Consider creating an alphabetical or categorical filing system.

Shop
Consider doing your “sale list” shopping at more than one grocery store. This means reading more sales ads and going to more stores, but if you are strict and only buy things on your sales list at each store, you will probably save more money. A trick to remember is that the store which has lower everyday prices (for your need list) will probably not have the best sales. Expensive stores use deep discounts to lure people in. Take advantage, without getting tricked.

Tricks grocery stores use to get your money

1. Phantom Sales. Sometimes items are listed in the circular, or have a sales tag on the shelf, but are really only discounted by a penny or two. Keep accurate records in order to see what a real sale is.

2. End caps/displays. Is what's on the endcap the item that was on your list? Sometimes another brand of an item that is an advertised sale will be displayed. Make sure you're getting the one that's on sale!

3. Cross promotion. When you buy your sale item, is there a related item on a huge display next to it? Just because you're stocking up on peanut butter doesn't mean you need to stock up on jelly if it's not on sale. Do you really need to buy a new corkscrew?

4. X for $X deals. My grocery store often has things listed 3/$5, 5/$10 or 10/$10. Unless it says so, you don't need to buy that many to get the deal. My husband used to do this and was actually convinced by the end that he'd wanted exactly three boxes of granola bars. Do the math and buy however many you want/need.

5. Impulse purchases. Prepared meals (like roasted chickens) tend to be near the entrance so when you are frantic at 5:00, you see them as you walk in the door. Is that what you intended to buy? Is something else a better deal? Also, did you really want that candy or magazine?

How to grocery coupon - Week 1

I thought I'd launch a short series of posts on how I use grocery coupons to my best advantage to reduce my budget. Without further adieu:

Week 1

Plan

-If you have not already, set a weekly grocery budget. For now, set this at the level you have previously been spending. We’ll decrease it later.

-Tighten your belt a little bit. Aim to eliminate about $10 worth of luxuries from your budget for this week. This is not forever, it’s just to get you started and to free up some money for “investment purchases.” Consider eliminating one meal out, 2 convenience meals, or 2-3 meat meals to free up this $10. This $10 will be a strictly stockpiling budget. Do not dip into it for other things.

-Make a list of items that you buy every week or that you must have in your pantry. This will be your initial stockpile list.

- If you have time, do a quick pantry inventory.

Prepare
-Clip coupons from your weekly newspaper for items that you always buy. If you must buy an item this week, use the coupon. If not, place the coupon in an envelope or file box to be used later.

Divide your grocery budget into 3 parts:
-Make a “need list” of items that you will definitely need this week and are out of. Try to keep this list as thin as possible.

-Read the circulars from your grocery store (in print or online). Make a list of sale items that are on your stockpile list. This is your “sale list.” If you have coupons for items on your sale list, pull them from your file immediately and use them. Buy these items, whether you need them this week or not. Remember you are *only* buying things that you regularly use. Don’t buy frozen pineapple if you’ve never used it before.

-Make a “luxury list” of things you’d like to have if you can afford them. Add these things to your grocery list only if they are within your budget.

And with your $10 stockpile budget:
-Now, choose the 2 best-priced items from your sale list (the deepest discounts), and spend your entire $10 stockpile budget on these items. This is your stockpile list. If canned corn is 50 cents and it’s on your stockpile list, you can buy 20 cans. This will save you money later, when you don’t have to buy it for 80 cents a can.

Shop
-While you’re in the store, make sure you keep track of how much you spend. You should notice if you’re being overcharged or if a coupon you used didn’t get taken off.

"Not worth the gas money"

When I talk to people about deals I got, or ways that I save money, one thing that people say to me all the time is "You only saved $5 by going to another store? That's not even worth the price of the gas." I don't know quite why it irks me so much. Perhaps it's the dismissiveness of my methods, even when the person has asked to hear them. Perhaps it's the tone of superiority which implies that I don't know what I'm doing. Or perhaps it's just the fact that they're generally wrong.

Even with current gas prices, $5 would be almost a gallon and a half of gas. In my car (and yes, I know this isn't all cars), a gallon and a half of gas would get me nearly 45 miles. Yes, I would agree, if I'm driving 45 miles out of my way, it's probably not worth my time. But the extra mile down the road to Target? I think it'll be okay.

Don't get me wrong, I realize that there are reasons other than money to want to conserve gas. If the person said to me "I'm trying to conserve as much gas as possible, so I don't drive that far," I'd be okay with that, even respect and appreciate the decision. If they said, "I'm short on time, and I don't think it's worth the extra shopping time," I'd totally understand. If they even said, "You know, I really don't want to do that," I'd be totally cool with the decision. But just don't cling so strongly to this mathematically ridiculous excuse.

Supermarket savings course

Crystal at Biblical Womanhood has a discount this week on her Supermarket Savings e-course. The price is temporarily discounted to $8.97, and when you buy a course for yourself, you get a free course for a friend.

I purchased this course about a month ago. It includes audio recordings, with accompanying workbook pages, access to a message board, and several e-books that help with recipes and menu planning. Since I've been couponing and discount shopping for a while, I already knew some of what she teaches, but it was good to hear it again and there was enough new info to make it worth the cost. If you're brand new to coupon shopping, though, this course will revolutionize the way you look at grocery stores.

(Disclosure: The link to the course above is my affiliate link and I will get a small commission if you buy through it. Feel free to surf directly to Crystal's site and sorth through her products if that makes you more comfortable.)