The coupon is good for 3.99, they actually do exist and are good on 1 product. ... thats the whole point I'm trying to make, you need to think outside the box..
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I do mostly sales for my groceries - we don't eat most processed and packaged foods, I make my own almond milk, and we rarely eat meat (never ground beef - after 4 years of working in a homeless shelter, the smell of ground beef cooking is enough to turn my stomach!). We also do buy some food at costco which helps with the savings on good quality meats that would otherwise be beyond our budget - there is fresh lake trout for supper tonight that wouldn't be on our table otherwise. I can't give a savings estimate as I've only ever shopped sales since I moved out of home at age 18, but I know that I spend over $250 per month less on food than my Dad, who is also feeding a family of two (but he has ridiculously expensive tastes and eats out of boxes a lot :( - not good seeing as how he's a stroke survivor). When I get some coupons for stuff I use frequently, the savings do go up, but probably not more than 10% of my grocery bill.
Household necessities like laundry detergent are another story, although I rarely need to buy these as we use very little of them.
^^ Not to say I don't do a lot of laundry, lol; I find that if you use half the detergent and a few shakes of Borax, the laundry's cleaner and my pocketbook's happier. :)
I would say 35% because I can stack. I did buy 30 boxes of Vector cereal for $2 each and each box had a breakfast PIN which I am using to get 30 coupons for free Silk Almod. My son inhales Vector and my DD drinks a carton of Silk a week so this was a fantastic deal for me. The cereal expires in November. It has been removed from the boxes and all the cereal bags are in a Huge Rubbermaid bin
I can honestly say that I same a minimum of 45%, probably higher. I purchase most of my meat at a 50% discount (helps when the butcher tells you what time to show up) at the store I go to, they do a 50% mark down when it is a 5 day best before date, so plenty of time to get it wrapped properly and into the freezer. I i'm always on a lookout for any dairy coupons, the fresh veggie coupons (a lot with the VH sauces) and I get several fpc's a year for fresh veggies as well as my bff has a huge garden I pick from and freeze. Since it is only dh and I know, i stock up if a great sale is coming and I am running low on something, and I can stack, so I usually will have a 4 month supply of any given item. I bake my own bread and we don't eat very much processed food, I prefer to make it all, and since I'm a celiac as well, it's safer for me to make most of my food.
i think it's all a balance.. on these extreme couponing shows you look at the stockpiles that could fill a small grocery store.. but realistically are they going to get through ALL of that before it goes off? products have expiry dates.. if conditioner sits too long is can separate, does a person really need a wall of toilet paper or paper towel to last them years?? do you need 100+ bottles of cola? it does have a limited shelf life and goes flat.. i've pulled away a fair bit from couponing and being careful with the stockpile i don't want to end up having items i've purchased (even for a highly reduced rate) to go to expire because i simply wasn't able to get through it all before it went off
I totally agree with ^^^^ you lol. even if the items are free and your paying tax and you buy a 10 year supply and it is off in 2 years... well that was a waist of your time and $ and the only people that benifit are the stores and the government.
30% sometimes more depending on the sales!
I'm around 30-50% savings depending on what kind of savings day it is. More often I am at 30% than 50%.
^^^ resurrecting an old post as your first post?? Hmmm...spam ?? not sure
It goes back and forth. There's me, my husband, 4 year old daughter and kitten. It's hard to compare what we used to spend to what we do now, because there's no formula or diapers or baby related stuff (we didn't coupon back then). But I know we were spending about $300+ in groceries a month. Now, it goes back and forth. About once every 2-3 months, I buy a lot of fresh stuff without coupons, as I freeze tons of meals at once, so we don't need any coupons for "frozen goods". It's about $150 every 2-3 months to get everything. Aside from that, we only spend about $60 a month on groceries.
Couponing has taught me the best prices of things, and when to wait for that price. We bought an entire school's year worth of snacks and juice boxes for my daughter, probably spent maybe $80 for an entire school year. Her main food is prepared by me out of that $150 pre-made by me budget.
The big picture to me, is that with a husband, a child in school (who need a lunch + two "snack and drink breaks" a day), we should be spending much more. We never pay for "non-expiring goods", bathroom, body, cleaning, paper goods.. those all end up being free.
So before couponing, not including diapers, formula, and all that (I won't include that since we don't use that anymore), we used to spend about $4000 a year on groceries. Now, it's under $2000. If we included hair goods, razors, deodorants, toothpaste, toothbrushes, cleaning, smellies, pet goods (yes we get those all free too!).. Basically everything not food related, that's probably about $1500.. So what should be close to $6000+ a year, is less than $2000 a year.
I would like to think I'm closer to the extreme ones lol. End of December has a giant Dollarama bag of expired coupons, a box that weighed about $50 to send to different shelter's that are able to used expired coupons. It weighs enough that carrying it was painful!
Also, my husband is in film school. He wanted to do a documentary on Extreme Couponing. But, while planning this the best I could, I realized what that show does. They spend months and months preparing, collecting, getting more coupons than they will ever need, to make it "watch worthy". I told him I didn't want to make the film with him, because for it to be interesting would require collecting a lot of HV coupons for a "splurge" on more than we need, just to make it look like every time I go out, I walk out with $500 in free groceries. We've all collected lots of FPC's, HV, and waited til best sales to walk out with a shopping cart for a few dollars - but this doesn't happen all the time. It takes a lot of work. That show makes it seem like people do this weekly and come home with car loads for next to nothing. That happens VERY FEW times!! Yes, we get a lot of free stuff. My city is small, and everything is a 3-5 minute drive to any store. So scopping all the freebies up is easy. But it's not like we all come out with a truck load every week, that takes planning, collecting..
ANYWAYS, that show really "over does" what a couponer does. I feel we've all had those insane shopping trips, but it doesn't happen all the time. Hell, I'm happy for a free pack of toilet paper or a few toothbrushes a week!
Also, that show makes me a little sick. So many episodes they buy unhealthy amounts of pop, chips, chocolate bars, frozen foods.. I don't have problems with these items, but how much they buy before they expire is unhealthy. Lots of people tell me "oh well you might coupon, but i seen the show, it's all unhealthy stuff you get". No! We get coupons for veggies, healthy goods, meats, milk, cheese, fruit.. good stuff! Those are what most of us are after. That show makes couponers look like they live on chips and chocolate bars. They don't show the healthy parts. They just show that you can save up enough coupons for 4 months to empty a store of chips.