Save $6,000 a Year through These Simple Shopping Tips

Atlanta, GA — Stephanie Nelson, founder of CouponMom.com  and author of The Coupon Mom’s Guide to Cutting Your Grocery Bills in Half: The Strategic Shopping Method Proven to Slash Food and Drugstore Costs, says if a family knows some simple strategies they can save over $6,000 in one calendar year.

“I’ve been saving at least $100 a week on groceries since my first son was born 17 years ago,” Nelson says. “That could pay for a child to go to college and that’s real money,” said Nelson.

With the uncertain economic climate, coupon clipping is becoming more popular than ever, and Nelson has some simple advice to help shoppers save this year. Nelson says it is possible for a family of four to spend $100 or less per week on groceries if they learn Strategic Shopping techniques.

Strategic Shopping combines store coupons with national coupons and store loyalty cards along with store coupon policies (like double days) to achieve maximum savings.

“It is very realistic for a family of four to be able to save $500 a month,” says Nelson, “At least $100 a week with grocery sales/coupons and $25 a week with other coupons (restaurant, clothes, online shopping, travel, bookstores, bowling, etc)…that’s $6,000 a year!”

The best way to start on the road to savings, is to take advantage of her free Coupon Mom website to help shop strategically. CouponMom.com is the country’s leading grocery deals site with over 2.5 million members who take advantage of this free service.

Nelson tells Family First she started the site to help consolidate all the ways to save into one central location for shoppers. Her site is not compensated by any of the suppliers or stores they include on the site so there is no favoritism to any specific store or brands.

To get started, go to www.couponmom.com  and download Stephanie’s free electronic book, “Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half.” It teaches the basic principles of Strategic Shopping to help families save dramatically. In addition, the free website helps shoppers by finding the best deals and savings at 41 grocery stores and drugstores every week.

Here are the tips to follow:

Plan your meals and shopping lists around featured sale items.

 Use your store’s weekly sales ad flier to plan your menus for the week. Then, write your shopping list around the items and brands that are on sale.

 Taking a few minutes to make a detailed plan will save you the time of making unplanned trips to the store during the week–which can ruin your budget.

 Planning ahead also helps you avoid impulse shopping during your trip.

Know how your stores’ savings programs work.
 Do they have “buy one, get one free” deals?
 Do they double coupons?
 Do they offer a store discount cards that gives you automatic discounts?
 Do they have special store coupons?

 Once you know your stores’ rules, you can combine them to pay the lowest possible prices for your items, such as using two coupons with a “buy one, get one free” deal. Combining strategies can result in free items.

Use grocery coupons, ideally when the item is on sale.
 Buy the Sunday newspaper—75% of grocery coupons come from the newspaper. Buy two to three copies per week to save dramatically. Stephanie writes on her website that a $2 paper that yields $10 in saving – and possibly $20, if you double the coupons – is definitely worth the money.
 Go online–grocery stores often have their best deals and printable coupons on their websites.
 Many stores offer electronic coupons that go directly on your store discount card. Stock up on common items when they hit their lowest price.
 Don’t buy a year’s supply, just enough to last until the next sale (two to three weeks).
 Boneless chicken is on sale every other week at Stephanie’s grocery store, so she buys two weeks of boneless chicken every other week to store in her freezer. This habit saves her family of four $325 a year on this one item.
 Be flexible about brands and stores.
 Buy the brand that’s on sale with a coupon, or get the store brand if it’s less expensive.

 Shop at the store with the best prices for your items that week.

Nelson offered Family First some specific tips about how to shop for certain things that might surprise you.
• Never buy personal items without coupons because they are expensive but always on sale somewhere – toothpaste, lotion, shampoo, etc. Same goes for cereal, yogurt, cheese, margerine and sour cream – you can always find a coupon and these are expensive items without one. PS- you can freeze cheese!
• What to buy at warehouse clubs? Surprisingly, Nelson recommends buying produce and meat! She says team up with other families on produce such as the 20 lb bag of potatoes which costs the same there as a 10 lb bag at the grocery store. Also, the grade of meat at the price clubs is 30% less expensive but a grade above the standard grade in grocery stores – so you’re getting better-quality meat at lower prices. And meat freezes!
• Don’t get suckered in on packaging to save time. The 100-calorie snack packs are all packaging. Buy the same snack (such as Cheez-Its) in a full box and then make your own snack packs using snack-sized plastic bags. Same goes for pre-washed lettuce. Nelson says it takes 5 minutes to cut up a head of lettuce that creates the equivalent of 3 bags of lettuce. At $2/head versus 3 bags of lettuce for $7.50, that makes the 5 minutes of work worth 73% savings. Isn’t your time worth that?
• Nelson recommends making a list of your 10-20 must-have items you shop for every week. Take that list to each store around you and find the prices on these items. Add this up and determine where you should go for your weekly shopping trips based on the total bill for these items. She said that may sound labor-intensive but that one day of work can save you a ton of money over the course of a year.
• Buy spices in bulk at health food stores. This way you can buy only what you need and not have jar after jar of spices you’ll never use before they get stale.
• Stores almost never offer coupons on meat so Nelson recommends buying whatever is on sale that week and freezing what you don’t use for the following week.
• Understand the “loss-leader” items for certain stores. These are the items stores knowingly price extra low to get you into the store. Nelson said her item like that is coffee. Super Walmart, a store she doesn’t shop often because it’s farther away from her house, offers coffee at a much lower price and makes the trip worth it. She warns though not to get sucked into the other items in the store that are not on sale and therefore, not worth buying there.

Her main rule of thumb is buy what you’ll use, not just because it’s on sale. Be flexible with brands and do your homework for extra savings. For more information go to http://www.couponmom.com .