I was very excited when Rent.Food.Broke. contacted me about writing an article for them about saving money on groceries. I know Rent.Food.Broke focuses on staying under a $10 limit. Well, I spend about $10 a week on groceries for each per person in my family. Yep, that's right, just $50 a week for my family of five. This includes all our food, diapers, toiletries and paper goods. If you'd like, you can check out my most recent shopping trip.

"Couponing" is very overwhelming to many people. It was overwhelming to me when I first started! My husband was a first year law student, not allowed to work, and we had twins 3 weeks after he started school. Money was tight, but time was just as valuable. I found couponing to be incredibly time consuming and overwhelming. It definitely wasn't fun! While there were many things that helped me persevere through that time (necessity was a great motivator!), it wasn't until I understood two basic concepts that "couponing" seemed do-able to me. These two concepts are: (1) Stockpiling, and (2) Deal Stacking.

Stockpiling

If you buy enough of something when it is on sale for a really great price, you won’t have to buy it when it’s not. For example, let's say cereal goes on sale for $1 a box. This would be a great opportunity to "stockpile" cereal! Buy enough cereal to last you a few months. That way, you won’t have to buy it when it is priced at $4 a box.

Deal Stacking

You can combine different deals on the same product to get an even better price than either deal would give you on its own. For example, let’s say that you had a coupon for $1 off two cereals. If you use that coupon when cereal is priced at $4, you would pay $3.50 a box. But if you wait and combine it with the $1 sale on cereal, you would only pay $0.50 a box! You can stack sales and rebates and coupons to get a lot of products for FREE, especially at drugstores.

But even understanding these two concepts doesn’t make "couponing" easy. It is difficult to know when things are on sale for their rock bottom price. It is also difficult to keep track of all the different deals that are available and how they can be stacked.

In the current economic situation, I recognize that there are many people who need to lower their groceries bills. I also recognize that most of these people don’t have the time to track prices and match deals on their own.

To solve this problem, I've created a money-saving database and right now it's free! When you're done looking around Rent.Food.Broke. for the day, why not visit me too at My Frugalicious.

Happy Shopping!

My Frugalicious was created by Misty and Cory to help others easily learn their hard-won knowledge. They learned how to save atleast 60% on their grocery bills and want you to share the savings too!