I have finally gotten the courage to give couponing & CVS-ing a try and am getting coupons from my local paper (it has all kinds of inserts). I’m just wondering if there are other good places I should look.

I live in Jewel-Osco land (same as Kroger) and have been a loyal ALDI shopper for years. I look at the pics of your shopping trips and think “I want all of that!” so I’m thinking I could have all of that, or close to it, if I just knew your magic formula.

Anyway, I found free sunscreen stickers!

They turn red when it’s time to reapply.

I linked to them on my (very new) blog: http://www.birkenmommy.blogspot.com

Katy

Are you guys not eating much meat at all, or did you purchase a bunch at one time?? I never seem to see meat in your shopping pics.

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Money Saving Mom here: I only bought beef hot dogs and sliced turkey this week. Last week I bought a big bag of chicken which we’ve still not opened and we also have quite a few steaks and ground beef already in our freezer from previous sales and stock ups.

I haven’t been buying much meat recently because our freezer is full of meat and people were bringing us dinners. And I likely won’t be buying much meat for the next few weeks since we still have at least 4-5 weeks’ worth of meat in our freezer plus at least 2 weeks’ worth of casseroles/frozen dinners I made up before Silas was born.

I try to have at least two to three weeks’ worth of meat in our freezer at all times so if there’s a week when there are no good meat sales, I can just skip buying it.

However, we likely eat less meat than many families just because we’re a smaller family. A pound of ground beef can easily last us for two meals and a bag of chicken can be stretched for at least 4-5 dinners, if not more. We also usually have at least one meatless meal per week. So we can easily just consume a few pounds of meat per week.

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Money Saving Mom here: I usually menu plan based upon what we already have on hand (that I’ve previously stocked up on with a good sale) and what’s on sale at the store. So I make the menu while I’m making my grocery list. I sometimes revamp it if I run into a really great sale at the store, or if I’m inspired to be creative with things we already have on hand.

We don’t buy much in bulk aside from yeast at Sam’s since it is significantly less expensive. And we stock up on good deals at the grocery store when we have wiggle room in our budget per the Buy-Ahead Principle I wrote about here:
http://www.moneysavingmom.com/money_saving_mom/2009/06/one-of-my-biggest-grocery-saving-secrets.html

I usually use Basic H, Basic G, and baking soda for all of my cleaning–aside from laundry soap and dish soap.

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Money Saving Mom here: Gina, in the case of a PDF coupon (as this one is) so long as it is hosted on a reputable site and has correct information on it to be submitted by the store for reimbursement, it should be accepted and the store will be reimbursed. However, because there have been a number of fraudulent coupons produced in the last few years, many stores are more leery of printable coupons.

I’m sorry you had a difficult time!

Thank you for this post. I love seeing how everyone is saving! I am great with finding sales but I need to do better about keeping track of my spending. And this is helping me be more accountable.

Please check out my blog as I am having my first ever contest which will help support another homeschool, single mom like myself. Thanks!

Best to you!

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Money Saving Mom here: Yes, the manufacturer actually sent me some coupons for free products which is why I’ve been “buying” them. (I often get coupons for free products in the mail because of things I’ve signed up for previously or, on occasion, I’ll get sent a few free product coupons because I blog about coupons–which was the case in this instance.)

These are certainly handy, but I wouldn’t buy them without the free coupon unless I could get them for next to nothing as I agree that they are regularly priced very high.