Tag Archives: online coupons

Saving the Most with Your Grocery List

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If you go into the store without a grocery list to do your weekly shopping you’re likely to spend more and forget a few necessary items.  Eventually, you’ll have to go back for those necessary items and end up grabbing a few more things you may not necessarily need.  Making a grocery list also helps you take full advantage of the money saving power of manufacturer coupons.  Here are a few tips to help you merge your grocery coupons and your grocery list to save the most money on every trip.

Photo Credit: http://www.couponaudit.com

Extreme Couponing

If you’ve ever watched the TV realty series Extreme Couponing, you know that it is humanly possible to walk out of the grocery store with several hundred dollars worth of merchandise for pocket change.  Though the people on the show pretty much coupon full time and a lot of what they get can’t be incorporated into a weekly meal plan, it is inspirational.  Check for coupons online and printable coupons, subscribe to the Sunday paper and get you a coupon wallet to keep everything organized.  You don’t have to go extreme to save money.

Meal Planning for the Coupon Mom

On Sunday, after you’ve talked your kids into clipping out all of the coupons out of the paper’s insert, sit down with your computer and lay out all of the coupons.  Pick out what you can use to make your meals for the week and file the rest of the coupons in alphabetical order for later use.  Search for weekly specials online at your local grocery store and try and find any other online coupons you may need to fill in the gaps.  This way you’re basing your weekly meal plan around the coupons efficiently rather than using one coupon towards a meal that you need 15 non-discounted ingredients to make.

Grocery Shopping Made Easy

When you head to the grocery store you want to have a clean, hand written or printable grocery list, your stack of coupons for that week’s food and stable blood sugar so you don’t deviate from your list due to temptation.  There is no need to carry around coupons that you won’t be using that week.  Remember that buying superfluous items at a discount still costs money, so try and use coupons that help you save on the things you actually need and not use them as an excuse to buy a bunch of unnecessary stuff.

Grocery coupons may seem like a hassle, but once you get the hang of it they really can save you 10-20% a week.  Try these organization methods and see if you can’t save enough money to make it worth the effort.  There’s nothing like free coupons saving you enough over the course of a month to completely justify a night out to dinner!

Picking Fresh Meats on your Grocery Checklist

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Eating processed meats, like bacon, sausage, deli meats, and hot dogs, may raise the risk of heart disease and diabetes, according to U.S. researchers at Harvard. Even further, unprocessed, red meat may not be as bad as we once thought. This may be because processed meats contain about 4 times more sodium and 50% more nitrate preservatives than unprocessed meat. While more research has to be executed before definitive health risks are pinpointed, unprocessed meat can make a great dinner and is definitely better for us than fast food hamburgers or take-out hot dogs. When you’re shopping at the grocery store, gravitate towards fresh, unprocessed meat at the butchery. To help you select the richest, most delicious meats, we’ve created a grocery checklist for picking fresh meats, so that you can bring the healthiest meats home to your family:

  • Know your grades: Prime beef is the ultimate in tenderness, juiciness, and flavor, while choice cut will still be tender and juicy. Choice grade cuts are great if you’ll be marinating your meat, giving you the opportunity to save a bit of money by purchasing a cheaper grade.
  • If a meat item is on sale, take advantage of a fresh product! The demand will be greater on sale items so there is less likelihood that the meat has been sitting on the shelf for too long.
  • “Select” meats are great candidates for sale items, so because they are often cheaper for the butcher to buy but they have a high markup price. However, select meats are lower in quality and taste. Select meat could work great mixed in with something that’s spiced, like in meatballs, for example.
  • Check out the color: When choosing fresh meat, you should always check out the color before you make your pick. Beef should be cherry red, while pork has a pale color. Ground beef can be red on the outside and purple on the inside, meaning the meat has been exposed to trace amounts of oxygen. Don’t worry, about a little bit of purple doesn’t mean the meat is bad. Also keep your eyes peeled for extensive marbling, which makes for a delectable, tender cut of beef.
  • Clearly, you should stay away from smelly meats. Take a whiff of the meat under inspection and make sure there’s no stinky, rancid stench coming from your cut. Of course, this is a no-brainer!

Reduce the sodium and preservatives in your food by picking the freshest meats at the grocery store. Next time you’re at the supermarket, make sure to keep a grocery checklist for picking meats so that you can serve the freshest unprocessed meats to your family and friends.