Grocery Smarts How to links

To start, these are the locations where grocerysmarts works.
Arizona
Eastern Washington
Idaho
Nevada-Las Vegas
Southern California
Utah

So for those of you near me, if you want, we could totally have a free coupon class. Taught by the person who got me my newspaper subscriptions. Or not.

For now, I'm going to quote heavily from her blog.

Step 1: Getting and Organizing the Coupons

The only day of the week the manufactures coupons come in the paper are on Sundays. You can buy them on ebay, or subscribe to a coupon clipping service, but that generally ends up cost more than the papers would.

There are 3 main types of inserts;
1) Proctor and Gamble (P&G)
2) Smart Source (SS)
3) Red Plum (RP)

Coupons come weekly, except on holidays, when there are none.
I pull out all the inserts, write the date on the front with a sharpie, and file them in a hanging file organized by type and date. That's it, no clipping or sorting at this point.


Steps 2 & 3

Step Two: Maximizing and Using Coupons the right way
When I found out I had to use coupons to make this system work I was skeptical because I had used coupons in the past and had no success saving money. If something isn't on sale, the store brand is usually still cheaper. But combining a sale with a coupon can mean great deals.

Store ads change weekly and new items go on sale. The object is to use your coupons when those items go on sale. Grocery Smarts is a FREE website with no registration or log ins needed that will tell you exactly which items go on sale when and when to use our coupons. Grocery Smarts lists the items on sale that week and rates them between 1-5 stars. They also list the normal and sale price and which coupons to use that week so you get the maximum amount of savings possible. This website does all the work for you and its FREE!

Step Three: Planning out your Shopping Trip

Once a week new items go on sale at the grocery store. They are advertised in their weekly circulars that come in your mail, typically on Tuesdays. Sometime during that week log on to the grocery smarts lists and plan a trip to the store. All grocery stores in the listed states are on the lists, so no matter where you like to shop you can use grocery smarts! Cool huh!

Every week the lists are update with the current sale items, prices, and what coupons to use to get items at rock bottom prices, or even FREE. Every week since I have been using grocery smarts, something has been FREE.

When you log on to the list plan your shopping trip out. My budget is $50 and I do not go over it, unless it's a BIG week (I'll get to that in the next step). I use the list, I like to say religiously. I stick to my plan and don't let the signs at the store lure me into buying things that aren't really a great deal.

After I go through and plan out what I am buying I print off my list. Then I go through and figure out how many of each item I am going to buy. I normally buy as many items as I can with my coupons. For example, if Captain Crunch cereal is on sale for $1.67 and my coupon is for $1.50 of any box I could buy 4 at .17 cents a piece, because I get 4 Sunday papers. If Darigold yogurt goes on sale for .50 and the coupon is for $1/2, then I would be able to buy 8 Darigold yogurts, because my 4 coupons each buy me two yogurts for free.

After I plan out what I am buying, how much of each product I am buying, I just quickly jot down my expected amount I am going to spend. I like to do that, so then when I am checking out, if the bill is way off I will know to ask if something didn't ring up the right way.

And the last thing I do is cut out the coupons from my hanging file. The coupon location tells you exactly where to find your coupons. Here is an example; the Captain Crunch cereal coupon for $1.50 of a box is located in RP 5/15. So I would know to go to my file, find Red Plums insert from May 15 and cut out the $1.50 off Captain Crunch cereal. I would repeat the process until all 4 coupons were cut out from my 4 inserts.

She promised to have post about shopping soon.