Southern Illinois Money Savers

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Last time we talked about the Super Simple Saver and I have to admit that kind of simplicity is really tempting to me.  However I know that for my family to make things work I have to go a step beyond.  I am what you may call a moderate saver.  I teeter back and forth between a week of shopping multiple stores with lots of coupons to a week of little to no shopping.  This works for me!  I am able to really stock up one week and take it easy the next and occasionally I take off a few weeks from couponing altogether.

To be a Moderate saver you will still need to shop your home to determine what items you have on hand and what items you are in need of.  You will also need to menu plan.  Menu planning goes without saying regardless of what kind of a saver you are, it is necessary.  Not only that you will need to check your weekly fliers and write out a grocery list to ensure your getting the best deals available that week. On top of those things a moderate saver needs coupons!

So where can you get coupons?

I personally get the Sunday paper everyweek.  Sometimes I get 2 and sometimes I get 4 it just depends on how many inserts will be available.

You can also print coupons from Coupons.com, Redplum.com and Smartsource.com

Also if you shop at Kroger or a Kroger affiliate store you can upload coupons to your store loyalty card through Cellfire, ShortCuts and Kroger

Having the coupons is great but knowing what to do with them is the key.

In order to get maximum savings you must match coupons with the items that are on sale that week.  Of course every single item you need to shop for won’t necessarily have a coupon available but you can save a significant amount of money by matching coupons to sale prices.

If you feel like you want to look up all the matching coupons yourself Deal Seeking Mom has a wonderful coupon database that I use often.  Just type in a product and it will let you know if there is a coupon available.

However, if that task seems too daunting you are sure to find a blogger who covers a store you want to shop at just by googling.

So lets say I was looking for CVS deals I would just google “CVS Deals 2/20″.  I would add in the 2/20 because the new deals started on Sunday, so just add in the date of the beginning of the sale for any store you search.  That search will pull up any blogger that has posted coupon deals for that store.  This will definitely make your coupon match up time alot faster.

Matching coupons to sales will dramatically lower your grocery budget!

I personally do a major coupon matchup the first week of payday, I shop several stores and stock up on what I can.  On the second week of payday I usually run to one store and just pick up what I need.  This keeps me stocked up with super cheap – free household supplies and also keeps me from getting burnt out on coupon shopping crazy every week.

Next time we will talk about the No Holds Barred Super Coupon Shopper!