Paper or Plastic?

This post contains affiliate links from Grocery University.

During the month of September, I decided to tackle out outrageous $600 grocery budget and using a little planning and the tips learned from Grocery University we were able to cut our spending by $200!  Since then, I’ve lightened up on the planning a bit BUT have still managed to use the tips to keep our spending at just $400 per month.. well actually October was $415 but November was a paltry $175!  So where do we go from here?

I’m considering setting a goal of paying only $300 per month for groceries!  Since I’ve been able to maintain $400 or less for a couple months with minimal effort I think I can do some extra planning and stick to a $300 budget.  I also pulled out household and baby items into their own line items in the budget so the $300 will be strictly for food related expenses.

Another change we will be making in the new year?  Paying CASH for groceries.  It’s easy to overspend when you can just swipe the plastic, but handing over those paper bills  makes that shopping trip much more real.  If you head to the store with a plan for the cash, you need to stick to that plan and not give in to impulses as much.  This will be a real challenge for me as I use my debit card for everything and rarely carry cash. 

As I plan to cut our budget even further, I’m looking over and listening to my Grocery University materials again to really ingrain the tips into my brain.  I really believe that this program helped our family save $200 a month and that it can help us to save an additional $100!  And let me add that my savings didn’t happen with stores that double $1 coupons or at ones that allow a high dollar coupon to be used on trial sizes.  If you watch the extreme couponing shows you know that’s often what gets them to a $1 total for $1000 of groceries but that just isn’t realistic.  One of my regular grocery stores doubles up to $0.50 coupons, another doesn’t double, and another doesn’t even take coupons!

If you haven’t checked it out yet, or know someone who could use a little help in trimming some spending, I encourage you to check out the program or share the link with a friend because there is a SALE going on TODAY!!!  Normally, Grocery University is $9.97 but TODAY ONLY the price is just $4.97!! It’s a great deal and could make a great gift for someone struggling with this area.

Another great deal for today is Financial Peace University!  The home study course is just $129 (normally $399!!) and the online format that Hubs and I are going through is just $109.

Check out these two great deals to get your 2015 off to a great start!

Cutting The Grocery Budget–Wrap Up

We’ve had a little break in posting because we had a somewhat surprise visitor in the form of my 90year old grandpa!  We hadn’t seen him since early June so this was quite a treat!  At that point Baby Wee had just started walking.  Now she’s running and climbing everywhere, displaying more of her personality everyday!

But I promised a wrap-up with tips and tricks that I had learned during this process and so here we go!

Here are the top 5 easy to do things that helped me to cut our grocery budget by 33% in just one month!

Menu Planning -  Ok, I was already doing this before we set out to cut our budget BUT I made one small change in HOW I planned.  I planned my menu around the items that were on sale that week.  See, I told you it was simple!  Somehow, it had never occurred to me to do this before I bought the Grocery University program. Once I read that I was like “DUH!!”  While we still might decide on a meal or two that just sounds good at the time, switching to mostly on sale ingredients helps immensely!

Shop Your Pantry -  Another simple and obvious tip!  Most of us have shelves and freezers with food purchased and then forgotten.  It’s always a good idea to take stock of what you already have on hand before heading to the store or even before menu planning!  This also comes in handy if you need to whip up a plan B one night because a quicker, easier dinner is warranted.

Use Coupons -  I told you these are easy to do right? Get a paper and get some scissors and start clipping!  Then get on your computer and start printing and clipping some more! Ask friends and family to give you their leftovers, pick up those coupons in the grocery aisle displays… It’s worth it, I promise.  I used to think coupons were a hassle but they really can save you big money – especially when you combine them with store sales and double coupon policies.

Know Your Prices – You may very well need to shop around to get the best prices.  I’m working on creating a Price Book so I can quickly reference prices of commonly purchased items.  It’s worth it to know what the normal and sale prices are on certain items so you know if that week’s sale is actually a “good deal.”  Currently, I have a general idea of prices but over the 4 weeks of tracking I know there are things I got at less than a “good deal.”  Some things could be cheaper at Sam’s Club even without a coupon, but unless you know the normal price per serving or ounce you might end up paying more.  Also, stores generally have sales on a cycle.  If you can figure out that your favorite pasta sauce is on sale every 4 weeks, you know the ideal time to stock up and use your coupons!  Knowing prices and sales cycles is really beneficial when you use it to stock up on things like meats – things for which you generally can’t find coupons.  If I see pork loin for $1.99/lb, I’m going to stock my freezer with self cut chops and roasts. If I see hormone and antibiotic free chicken breasts for $2.99/lb you better believe I’m buying a bunch! Stocking up when you know the price is low is a great way to save money even if you spend a little more during that trip.  Remember, we are shopping from our pantry and fridge/freezer before spending a dime at the store that week!

Get Organized – Know what is in your pantry and fridge. Know your “good deals.” Organize your coupons so you can find them quickly and easily.  Make a menu board with your favorite recipes to make menu planning faster.  With a toddler in tow, I need to be able to menu plan and grocery shop as quickly as possible.  I also don’t want to miss out on an unadvertised deal because I can’t find the coupon I know I have somewhere. 

My process looks something like this:

• Clip coupons from Sunday paper and file.  Pull coupons that will expire this week to the front.  Discard any expired coupons.
• Peruse the grocery store sale flyers when they come out on Wednesday. 
• Make a list of all “good deals” that I see or items we need to restock and print.
• Use the lists (usually 2 from 2 stores) and my pantry/fridge to make a menu for the week & highlight ingredients needed on the lists.
• Match highlighted items from the lists to coupons. 
• Hit the store(s)!

It really can be as simple as that!  Just a few small and easy changes made a big change in our budget.  There are even more tips I learned from Grocery University and implemented over the month, but these 5 tips are the easiest things I did.  They are also easy enough that pretty much anyone can do them!  I hope they can help you and your family too.

Delectable Banana Bread

Now that fall is upon us, I’m back into baking mode!  I love baking bread, cakes and cookies but we don’t have air conditioning so here in the South that means summer is a barren wasteland for all things homemade baked goods.  It’s just too darn hot to run the oven!  But summer also means lots of fresh fruits… some of which just don’t get eaten before they start to go bad.  In the spirit of saving money, I try to stick fruits in the freezer before they spoil too much so we can use them up when we get a chance.  This is how I came to have 8 blackened bananas in a gallon baggie in my freezer.

We always seem to have 1 or 2 bananas that just don’t get eaten before they start to go bad and I hate to waste them.  I remember when (ok showing my age here…) you could get bananas for $0.25/lb and now they average about $0.59/lb.  I hate spending that much but I actually like bananas so I try to buy them when they go on sale.  But with just 1 or 2 bananas leftover every few weeks you can’t do much so when I get one that is turning I stick it in a gallon baggie and pop it in my freezer. Then I just add to the baggie each time we have extras until I get 6-8 very ripe bananas. 

And then this delicious bread happens.

For this recipe you need about 3 cups of banana which is between 6-8 bananas.  BUT if you don’t have enough and are really craving banana bread you can substitute the missing portion of banana with applesauce.  I have made it with up to one cup of applesauce and it was just as banana-y as if I had used all banana!

First you want to combine your sugar and butter until it’s light and fluffy.  I don’t know the why behind this step but I do it, its pretty easy.

Next, you add the eggs and bananas (and applesauce if you choose). Mix well.

Finally, sift together your dry ingredients. (I will fully admit I totally skip this step – hey I have a toddler to get back to!) Then mix the dry ingredients with your banana mixture until just blended together.

Grease your loaf pans well.  I like to use butter and a paper towel to coat the pan but cooking spray works just fine.  If you have trouble with sticking, make sure to coat the corners really well.  Then fill your pans with the mixture until they are about 1/2-3/4 full.  I usually get 2 loaves with this recipe. One large and one medium sized.

Then bake for 45-60mins or until the centers come clean when you stick a knife or toothpick in. (My medium sized loaf took about 45mins and the larger loaf took closer to 60mins.)  Let them cool in the pan for about 10 mins and then remove from pan to finish cooling. Slice and enjoy with some butter or ice cream! Ready to start baking?  Here’s the recipe:

Delectable Banana Bread

3 cups	Banana, mashed (about 6-8 ripe bananas)
2 cups	Sugar
1 cup	Butter
4	Eggs, beaten
2.5 cups	Flour (I use all purpose)
2 tsp	Baking Soda
1 tsp	Salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

With electric mixer, cream the sugar and butter together.  Add the bananas and eggs and beat until well mixed. (You can substitute the banana with applesauce if you don’t have quite 3 cups.)

Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Blend the dry mixture with the banana mixture until just mixed.

Pour into 2 greased loaf pans.  Bake for 45-60minutes or until a knife or toothpicks comes out clean from the middle. You can also watch for the edges to start to separate from the pans – mine sometimes don’t do this so I always use the toothpick method.

Cool in pans for about 10 minutes then remove from pans and let cool.  Enjoy!

Frugal tip: If your family can’t eat both loaves before they go bad – not a problem in my house – you can freeze one loaf for later use!

Creative Grocery Savings

So I mentioned in my last post that I purchased 9 various Pillsbury items and got a free gallon of milk on an in store promotion.  Those items were on sale and I used coupons as well (some of which doubled!), bringing the total down considerably.  I think using coupons on top of store sales is an easy way to save but is there another way to maximize those savings?  YES!

Since our grocery ads come out on Wednesday and we only purchase a Sunday paper, I do my ad browsing online.  When I went to my store’s website, I discovered that they offer a section that has printable coupons and then had something called SavingStar.   Basically it’s a way to link your store card to earn cash back on items you purchase.  You just choose which offers to load to your card and then swipe your store card at checkout and you are done – no reciepts to upload!  I noticed that several of the offers were similar or the same as the coupons I had BUT they could be used in addition to the coupons and store sales giving me triple savings on certain items!

So let’s look at those Pillsbury items again…

Regular Retail Price of 9 items: $17.60
Ad Price for 9 items:                       $15.00
Instant Brand Svgs at Register:   -$2.00
Value of Free Gallon of Milk:       -$3.79
Coupons w/ doubling:                   -$4.40
Total Paid for 9 items:                $4.81

Today I received notification that my SavingStar savings had been added to my account.  I received $2.20 cash back related to the same Pillsbury items above. 

That makes my total cost for those items: $2.61 or about $0.29 per item!  Well really 10 items for about $0.26 each if you count the gallon of milk we also received!  That is an 85% savings!

SavingStar also loads one item every Friday that will be FREE if purchased by a certain date.  Last week that item was Reeses’ Peanut Butter Cups – oh the deliciousness!  And yes, the full cost was uploaded to my account so it was FREE!  That just made them all the more delicious!

To see if your store participates with SavingStar just go to http://savingstar.com to check!

Cutting the Grocery Budget–Week 1

My goal for this month is to cut our grocery budget by $200.  That is a huge amount but we were also spending a huge amount.  This week it will probably look like we aren’t doing so hot in the savings department because I spent $134.55… just $15.45 less than my original spending of $150 per week.  BUT… we stocked up on some things that *should* save us on grocery costs throughout the month and it’s still a savings for the week!  Oh, and I think I should mention that our “grocery” budget includes personal care items.  I also should mention, we have taxes here on groceries and it ranges from 5-7% depending on the item so that is included in my monthly budget as well. So what did I buy and what “deals” did I get?

First up was Sam’s Club.  Love ‘em or hate ‘em, warehouse clubs can be a great place to find deals. Personally, I prefer Costco but we only have Sam’s in our area.  There are deals to be had but you need to really check the prices at your local grocery stores to know if you are getting a good one or not.  For example, Campbell’s tomato soup runs $0.79+/can at the grocery store and at Sam’s I can buy it in a 12pack for $0.66/can.  We do not make a weekly trip here and generally buy just a few choice items when we do go.  So stocking up on a few items for the month, we spent $68.76… ugh… ok let’s break that down a bit with our price so it doesn’t hurt so much…

We bought:
5lbs of 90/10 ground beef – $3.65/lb (6+meals & cheaper per lb than the 80/20 at the grocery)
2 32oz flavored International Delight coffee creamers – $2.03 each (my vice)
3 Classico Pasta Sauces – $1.82 each
2 Simply Orange Orange Juice – $2.94 each
4lbs Butter (in sticks) – $2.87/lb or
2lbs Starbucks Beans – $8.99/lb (Hubs is a coffee snob and this runs us $13/lb at the grocery)

Next we went to Walmart.  Yes, I know allll about the evils of Walmart but for things like personal care items, they have the best prices in the area.  I spent $6.50 here and saved $4.25 using coupons! (That’s an almost 40% savings!) I will add that going here I also bought things I didn’t need that were *not* grocery budget line items so are not included in the total.  This will always be the downfall of shopping in a supercenter type setting.

We bought:
Carefree pantyliners – $0.44 (used $0.50 off coupon)
Stayfree pads – $1.86 (used $1 off coupon)
TRESemee Hairspray – $1.98 (used $2 off coupon)
Caress Body Wash – $2.22 (used $0.75 off coupon)

Finally, we went to Ingles (our local grocery store). We spent a grand total of $59.29 on just grocery items and we saved $31.96.  That’s right, we got $91.25 worth of food for just over $59!!  (A 35% savings!)  I’m not going to detail my entire grocery list here but our savings came from a few places.  First, we used our store card to save $25.76.  Big ticket items included in this savings were hamburger buns for $0.68, ground chicken for $3/lb, grapes for $1.40/lb and 33oz of olive oil for $6!  I used store card savings on some Gerber baby items that were 2/$3 or 3/$4 and stacked that with $1 off coupons bringing those down to $1 per meal or snack saving about $0.60 on each.  I also got catalinas for $1 off more Gerber items and $3 off my next shopping trip! (Catalinas are the coupons that print at the register with your receipt) In total I used $6.20 in coupons.

So did I save the 90% that you see on the extreme couponing shows?  Heck no!  But I do think I learned some helpful tips that will get us to the $400 or less monthly grocery budget. (Thank you to my affiliate, Grocery University)  I also think saving 35-40% off is a pretty good first effort. 

A few things I have learned from this first venture out? 

• The tips I learned from Grocery University have already saved me more than I paid for the download – seriously, go buy it now! 
• My local grocery store runs their ads from Wednesday to Tuesday every week so I can plan for my weekend shopping trip by looking at the online ad. 
• Running to town to pick up the “big city” newspaper (in our case, the Knoxville News Sentinel) is worth it for the extra coupons they offer. 
• I have a ton of coupons for non-food items and not so many for food items – I need to focus more on the food coupons when printing them from online. 
• I need to make a price list so I can better judge if items are a “good deal” or not – especially when shopping at Sam’s club. (ex: I should have bought the soup!)

What is your favorite grocery shopping tip? What was your biggest grocery shopping deal?

Taking a Bite out of the Grocery Bill

This post contains sponsored links from Grocery University.

Currently I grocery shop weekly.  I try to make a menu plan ahead of time and then stick pretty closely to that plan when we head to the store. I do not currently budget our grocery trips. Some weeks the bill is just $75, some weeks it's $150 or even $175! When I started making up a budget, I quickly realized that we were spending close to $700 per month on groceries. For two (and a half) people!  If you want to factor in what we are spending eating out in addition to groceries our monthly food budget is close to $1000.
Let's just let that sink in a minute shall we?

$1000.... We are spending nearly 22% of our monthly income on food. That.is.ridiculous.

Hubs doesn't think we can cut the grocery bill much but I would like to challenge him on that.  I've read dozens of articles on how to cut your grocery bill, watched hours of couponing shows, looked at coupon sites galore, perused our local newspapers... and I have yet to implement a system that works for us. Coupons in our local paper are sparse and hardly ever for things we actually eat. The TV shows on using coupons focus on those with "stockpiles" and all I can think about is "we have no place to put that much stuff!" and "how are they ever going to eat 100 yogurts before they expire?!"  The coupon sites are sometimes tedious to look through and who has time for that with a 13 month old?

There has to be a better, more efficient way to save, right? I mean, families of 4+ are claiming a monthly grocery budget of less than half what we spend.  Coupons can't be that difficult to find and use because thousands of people use them every day.  There has to be a way to maximize their use to my advantage without buying mountains of stuff to clog up our guest room. People have it figured out and I should be able to figure it out too!

Enter: Grocery University by one of my favorite bloggers.  This is a program she has talked about and used to reduce her grocery bill and others simply rave about it.  I am excited to see the reduction in our grocery bill and I am even more excited to tell you that there is a SUPER SALE on this program happening TOMORROW!

Grocery University is usually $9.97 and I am certain it will save you more than that just on your first shopping trip.  But for tomorrow only you can get this easy to use money saving program for as low as $2.99! So what do you get for $2.99?  You get a 2hr audio course on everything you need to know to make the most of your grocery budget, a printable workbook with more tips and visual aids, and the bonus Rock Bottom Price Database.  And?  It comes with a 60 day money back guarantee!! Seriously, what do you (and I) have to lose other than hefty grocery bills?  I'm so excited to get started and see how much of a difference it makes for us!

So more about that super one-day sale I was telling you about... The early bird will catch the worm on this one!  Save your family a little money and catch this amazing deal on Grocery University!

• 5 a.m. CT - kick things off with the low, low price of $2.99

• 8 a.m. CT - price goes up to $3.99

• 11 a.m. CT - price goes up to $4.97 

• 2 p.m. CT - price goes up to $5.97 

• 5 p.m. CT - price goes up to $6.97

• 8 p.m. CT- price goes up to $7.97 

• 11 p.m. CT- price goes up to $8.97 

 

Although this post is sponsored, all opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive compensation if you make a purchase using this link.