“I learned a long time ago that saving money makes spending money POSSIBLE!” For me saving money can be like a game, I like to see how much I can save money and also outsmart the "big guys". It always seemed to be more fun if I could share that information. I'll try to share some of the ideas that have worked for me in this blog. Most of what I write about are easy-to-use ideas that should help you keep more money in your pocket.
Saving money is not just coupons it’s a lot more. In future blogs I’ll talk about purchasing plane tickets, shopping online, and getting up to 50% off at thrift outlets.
Today, let’s focus on food! You know those pesky junk mail supermarket ads we get each week... well, guess what? They can help you save a lot of money. Think about what you use on a regular basis. You don’t want to buy items you don’t need. You should know that just because an item is advertised doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good deal. For example, a recent ad had canned vegetables on sale for .89 cents. This might seem like a good deal but they’re always around that price and can usually be had for about .50 a can on a real (good) sale.
Ok, you’ve are ready to save but you still want to save more don’t you? Pull out that pair of scissors. You didn’t realize a pair of scissors could cut your food bill did you? You need to clip coupons. They can really make a big difference. There are many places to find coupons: Some of the best places to find coupons are the Sunday paper or online on a number of websites. I use www.coupons.com. I haven’t used it yet but some of the coupon websites even allow you to electronically “load” coupons onto your store loyalty card.
Remember, clip only items that you use. This goes back to the idea I spoke of earlier: if you use it at this price it will save you money. If you buy it but don’t use it, you aren’t saving anything. If you have coupons for items that are already on sale you can really make a dent in the shopping budget. To give you an example, let’s say you buy yogurt that is on sale for 10 for $5.00 (most times you don’t have to purchase the 10 unless the ad say so). That makes the yogurt .50 each. If it is normally .75 each you’ve saved .25 for each one you buy. Let’s say you’ve clipped a coupon for .50 cents off if you buy 5 cups. Obviously that would add another .50 savings but it would take the price from .50 each a good deal to .40 each an even better deal. You can see that if you did this on a number of items you could really save some money on your groceries.
I hope you’ll send me back your questions and ideas so we can all benefit from the collective wisdom
