How to to lower your food budget - Part One

Some of you might wonder how I feed my family of 5 for $200 a month. This week and next week I'll talk about the two things that save me the most money at the grocery store.

Take a look at all this stuff I bought at the grocery store a while back, go ahead I'll wait....



Now that you have looked it over, how much would you pay for all of that? Go a head look it over and see how much of all the items I got and do the math, how much would you pay? I'll help you break it down. I got 6 boxes of Krusteaz cookie mix, 3 boxes of 20 count Electrasol dishwashing packets, 2 bags of Kraft shredded cheese, 3 boxes of Ritz crackers, 1 box of Wheat Thins, and 5 bags of Quaker Quakes Rice Snacks. I'm serious I want you to come up with a number in your head, before I'm going to tell you what I paid. Once you got one, you can scroll down and I'll let you know what I paid.






A lot of people think, is using coupons really worth my time? That's what I used to think, but now I know the truth...In most cases yes using coupons are worth your time and the money you spend on newspapers or buying ink and paper for your printer.
When you are using your coupons, make sure to wait to use a coupon until that item is on sale, to get the most for your money. I'll talk next week about how to know how good of a sale it is. Also just because you have a coupon for something doesn't mean you should us it, if you don't use the product and your family doesn't like it why buy it just to save money, if it is just going to sit on your shelf.
Most of the coupons I use are from the newspaper. At our house we get 5 newspapers on Sunday, so that I can get more than one thing at a great price. There are also places to get coupons online. I do print a few every month, like a coupon for cheese, so I never have to pay more than $3 for 2 pounds of cheddar cheese. The resource I'm going to talk about next week, will give you some links on where to find some online coupons.
So by now you are probably thinking I forgot to tell you how much I paid for those 20 items above. Don't worry I didn't forget, I just wanted to make sure you weren't cheating and came up with a number and had time to think about it. So if I would have bought all of these items not on sale without coupons I would have spent $63.83, which is $3.19 an item!!! So how does that compare to your guess? This purchase was made at a store, where you have to use a card to get the sale prices, so after I used my card I saved $31.58, which would bring the total to $32.25, which is now $1.61 an item, not to bad right!?! But then I had coupons from my newspapers, I used $22.25 in coupons, which then brought my total down to $10 for 20 items, pretty easy to do the math right? That is $0.50 an item! Now this isn't the kind of receipt I see all the time, but every once in awhile. But on a normal trip to the store I use several dollars worth of coupons, and use them on sale items which definitely adds up and helps us save money.
I challenge you to try to cut back on your food budget, too. If you have any questions let me know. Also if you live Utah I can give you contacts of people that can help you get better prices on Sunday newspapers. So if you have questions feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to help you!