Search Results for: budget

How to Coupon for Healthy Foods

July 23, 2018 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

Years ago, during the coupon craze, I bought my share of convenience foods that I could get for just pennies. Thanks to couponing and buying the deals, I was able to save a great deal of money on groceries. But over the years, I found that the money I saved wasn’t really saved after all. Instead, the money just went somewhere else—to the doctor.

I had high cholesterol, high triglycerides, and after a while, serious stomach ailments that required me to go see a specialist.

I eventually switched to a Paleo diet, focusing primarily on eating fresh fruits, veggies, and some meat. Since the change, my cholesterol is nearly 75 points lower, I no longer have high triglycerides, and my stomach is much improved.

I still try to keep the grocery budget trim, but it’s much harder to do so without using coupons.

Coupons for Healthy Foods?

Coupon for Healthy Foods — Couponing for Health

For years, I just assumed that there are no coupons for healthy foods, especially foods that aren’t processed, but that’s just not true. If you know where to look, you CAN find coupons for healthy foods.

Where to Find Coupons for Healthy Foods

The best place to start is the manufacturer’s website. Here are a few of my favorites:

Organic Valley—sign up for the mailing list, and you’ll receive coupons straight to your e-mail box.

Earth’s Best Organic—you’ll find coupons for baby items here.

Blue Diamond Almonds—sign up for their newsletter, and you’ll regularly receive offers

Whole Foods Coupons—you’ll find coupons for a wide array of products sold at Whole Foods

Other Ways to Get Coupons

There are other ways that I like to get coupons for healthy foods:

Facebook

Some companies will occasionally offer a coupon when you like their Facebook page. This is my favorite time to like the page. Also, companies sometimes post coupons on their Facebook page as their status update.

Write to the company

I admit, this sounds old fashioned, but I’ve had great success with writing to the companies individually. I will find the e-mail address of the company on the product, and then I’ll send them an e-mail. I usually let them know why I like their product and thank them for making it. My kids have food intolerances, so if the company makes a product my kids can actually eat, I thank them for that.

I don’t specifically ask for coupons, but more than 50% of the time, they send me coupons. Some companies are very generous and send several high value coupons. If you create a stock letter for this type of e-mail, you can send out several e-mails, each to different companies, in a relatively short period of time.

Of course, just as when you’re using coupons for processed foods, the best way to stretch your savings is to stack the coupon with the item when it’s already on sale.

While getting coupons for healthy foods is a bit more difficult than couponing for processed foods, you still can use coupons to lower your grocery bill.

What are your favorite strategies for lowering your grocery bill when shopping primarily for healthy foods?

Is There a Best Way to Meal Plan?

July 2, 2018 By MelissaB 1 Comment

The price of groceries just seems to keep going up, and up, and up. How much I’ve spent on groceries has nearly doubled in the last five years. True, my kids are older and hungrier, but in general, the price of groceries themselves has increased. In our household, groceries are our biggest monthly expense behind our mortgage.

If you’re like my family, you’re constantly looking for a way to cut your monthly grocery costs.

I’ve found that reducing grocery expenses largely comes down to making a plan and sticking to it. There are several ways to do this.

Make a Monthly Meal Plan

Best Way to Meal Plan — How do you meal plan?

Some people lower their grocery costs by making a monthly meal plan and shopping once a month. Of course, when I say shopping once a month, that doesn’t mean it’s the only time that they go to the store. Rather, they have one large shopping trip at the beginning of the month, and then they go to the store 1 to 3 more times during the month to get fresh produce and milk as needed.

This technique can save money mainly because you keep yourself out of the stores and avoid impulse buys by doing so. You’ve likely gone into the store to buy one or two items and found yourself walking out with a cartload of groceries. Those impulse buys, even if there a good deal, can destroy your budget. Those who shop once a month reduce their spending simply by reducing the number of times they allow themselves access to the grocery store and impulse buys.

Make a Menu Plan

Another technique is to make a weekly menu plan based on what you find on sale in the grocery store flyers. Between the items that you see on sale and the items that you already have in your house, you make a menu plan and shop for the loss leaders and whatever other items you need to make your meals.

Shop First

Still others go to their favorite store first and scout out the good, unadvertised deals. For instance, if pasta is on clearance, they may buy many bags of it and have several pasta meals that week. If they find a great deal on beef, they may make a stroganoff using the beef and pasta for one meal, and a spaghetti bolognese for another meal. These planners find the good sales and then make a menu plan. Once they get home, they rely on Pinterest, the internet and sites like MyFridgeFood to help them decide what to serve based on the great sales they found.

For years I have debated about which method works best and which one saves the most money. But, the bottom line is that you must choose the method that works best for you and your family. In this season of our family life, method two works best for us.

However, it doesn’t matter which method works best for your family. What really matters if you want to cut your grocery costs is that you have a plan and you utilize one of these three methods.

What is your favorite way to menu plan and save money? Do you prefer one of these methods or a different one?

Simple Ways to Save Even When Money Is Tight

February 20, 2018 By MelissaB 4 Comments

For the 15 years my husband and I have been married, we’ve always shared just one car. Actually, most of the time I’ve been the one with the car—first because I had to drive to work while he could easily take the train, and, once I became a stay-at-home mom, because I usually had the kids that I needed to transport while he could commute by public transportation.

While he’s been a good sport about this situation, the time has come to finally buy another car that he can use.

The problem? We don’t want to take out a car loan because doing so would create a serious strain on our budget. We want to pay cash instead.

But how do you save money for a car when you feel like there’s absolutely NO wiggle room in your budget? Here are the strategies we’re using.

Save Cash Back from Credit Cards

Our credit card regularly gives us cash back. For the first three months of 2016, we’ve earned just shy of $150 in cash back. If we continue at this pace, we’ll have an extra $600 in cash back thanks to using, and paying off, our credit card each month for as many purchases as we can.

Save Whenever You Receive Discounts on Regular Expenses

This is my favorite way to save because there are so many opportunities to save this way!

For instance, at Christmas, we received a postcard from our car repair shop offering 10% off our next car repair. I held onto that, and just last week we had a $284 car repair. We saved $28 thanks to the postcard, and that money went right in our car fund.

We took a vacation recently and stopped by Denny’s on our last day when we had eaten up all the food we had brought with us in the cooler. Our total was $39, but for some reason, the cashier decided to give us a $6 discount. I put that money right in our car fund.

Our grocery store gives fuel rewards points for shopping. For every $100 spent in groceries, you get 10 cents off your next gallon of gas. If you buy a gift card, your reward points are for double that amount. I send any of those savings to our car fund. Just today I put 19 gallons in my tank, and I got 20 cents off per gallon. I put that $3.80 into our car fund.

Save Change or a Specific Bill

I don’t use this strategy anymore because we typically use credit cards for our purchases, but when I was using cash a lot, I never spent the change and earmarked it all for a specific fund. One time, I went several months saving all of the $5 bills I got and used them to pay down debt.

To be sure, none of these savings strategies is growing our car fund at an impressive rate. However, we ARE saving something using ways we save in our everyday lives. We’re consciously, physically setting aside our savings, which is a great way to save when your budget is tight and you feel like you have no wiggle room.

Do you save like this? If so, what are your favorite strategies?