Grocery stores and coupons have been around a long time!

Coupon, late 1800s or early 1900s

1936 Grocery Store

 This “coupon craze” picture can be dated to 1909

I save an average of 35 percent every week at the grocery store. And if I can do it, so can you!

If you watch Extreme Couponing on television, you might say that a 35 percent savings is not that great. But I save this much every week. It is a consistent savings. And I only buy products and brands I normally use.

I admit to using coupons. But the bulk of my savings is not from coupons. No, most of my savings comes from buying sale items. My mantra is BUY WHEN IT’S CHEAP, NOT WHEN I RUN OUT.

Every Sunday I clip coupons from the newspapers.

However, unlike extreme couponers, I only clip coupons I’ll use. If there are a lot of coupons in the paper I like, I’ll consider buying more papers. But, I don’t have a cat so you’ll never see me clipping coupons for cat food.

After clipping the coupons, I sort them and file them in a notebook.

I have them organized in two sections: food and nonfood. Within each section are sub-sections: drinks, snack foods, frozen, bakery, hair products, dental, laundry detergent, etc. You can have as many subsections as you want.

After clipping the coupons, I study the store fliers.

I shop at two grocery stores so I study two fliers. I look for products and brands my family uses, and I make note when those products are on sale.

I pay close attention to the front page of each flier because that’s where the best deals are advertised. When I look through the remaining pages, I pay attention to “special buys” or “buy one get one free” deals. But I only look for products I always buy.

I make a shopping list based on the sales advertised in the fliers. And then I match up sale items with coupons I might have in my notebook.

The next step is to add items to the list that I am out of (but aren’t on sale). Because I BUY WHEN IT’S CHEAP, NOT WHEN I RUN OUT, there aren’t a lot of these items but there are always some.

Milk is usually one of the items I pay full price for because it is never on sale and rarely are there milk coupons. And my son only eats one brand of chocolate chip cookies so I often have to pay full price for these. I do stock up on his cookies when they are on sale but often expiration dates get in the way and I run out.

Buying this way means I have a couple of months worth of meat in my freezer. It means I have six months worth of hair color in my closet, and almost a years worth of laundry detergent in my basement. No, I didn’t get these products free. I repeat, I am not an extreme couponer. But I did get the brands I like to use and I paid a lower-than-usual price.

I could go on and on about how I have stocked up on items my family likes because they are on sale. This includes pastas, razors, soups, sodas, breakfast cereals, canned meats, condiments, skin lotions, and more…  The bulk of the savings comes from shopping sales.

So the next time hamburger is on sale for $1.99 a pound, instead of buying three pounds, buy twenty pounds. Stock up when it’s priced low so you don’t have to pay a higher price at a later date.

Buy when its cheap, not when you run out…