“Coupon Mom”

Sunday grocery shopping is not our favorite event. As discussed in the Healthy Lifestyle section we try not to shop at busy times. However, what we do try to do on a Sunday (besides going to church) is collect coupons.  A lot of us out there are trying to pinch pennies where we can, but sometimes this takes work. Yesterday I caught a feature on ABC from the “Coupon Mom” reminding us all how to save money when grocery shopping. In a nutshell, she reminded shoppers to buy generic items, plan your shopping (and eating) around what is on sale at stores, check receipts, and use coupons (which she has available online).

This mom has a few other favorite ways to save money at the grocery store, and some might seem a bit counter-intuitive:

Let things run out. We found that if we have a lot of something we use more of it and usually gratuitously. Think of how you get when your toothpaste is finished but you just need a teeny bit more. Well you get it by rolling over the tube 4-5 times, cutting off the end, or pushing hard at the top because you need that little bit to get your teeth clean. Whereas, if you have 2-3 in the closet you might just throw out the toothpaste when the cap gets too messy or it is almost gone. So as the saying goes “waste not, want not.” 

Keep your cans. At our grocery store we get charged a deposit just for the possibility that we might bring our cans back. On a 12 pack that is 60 cents. If we don’t take the cans back we loose 60 cents. So keep them, collect them, and get your money back.

Drink water from the tap. Call me crazy, but we have a good friend that works for a public water company and he can’t believe people drink bottled water due to rigorous State and Federal  water testing. If you just can’t stomach that buy a filter that attaches to the fawcett.