Some of you have wondered where I get my printable coupons. Here are the main coupon sites that I use: Coupons.com, Smart Source, Red Plum and Ibotta. Manufacturer websites and Facebook pages are another great source.
If you are new here and unfamiliar with my weekly What I Spent & Saved posts, it probably is helpful to understand a bit about how I shop. I do something called stockpile shopping. This simply means that when I see an item at rock bottom prices that I regularly use or know that I can use, I’ll buy several of it. This might seem kind of crazy, but it honestly saves me hundreds of dollars a year! Simply put, by buying 6 bags of frozen veggies when I can get them for $0.50/bag with a coupon and sale instead of paying the full price of $1.50, I save $6.00. This savings adds up pretty quickly! Want to know more about this kind of shopping?
I also buy meats and veggies in bulk. The meat I either can or freeze and then obviously have it on hand whenever I need it. I buy large quantities of fruits and veggies when they are in season and I can get them at really great prices. By canning or freezing them, I save a lot and we are able to enjoy great produce for less cost all year long. I do still buy some fresh fruits and veggies too. In fact, every 7 to 10 days I go to our local farmer’s market and get several heads of lettuce so that we can enjoy salads at least 4 times a week.
I hope that helps you make sense of some of this. I realize at first glance it can really look like we eat rather strangely! Of course, if you have any questions feel free to ask them in the comments! I’ll be more than happy to try to answer them.
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Favorite buys:
* Newman’s Own salsa for $0.33 each
* Banana for $0.03
* Blue diamond almonds for $1.17/can
* 3 lbs. sharp cheddar cheese for $0.99
Please excuse the poor quality and missing images. I somehow deleted a bunch of my pictures and the few I was able to retrieve were of poor quality. 🙁
Total Spent: $13.82
Total Saved with Coupons: $0.75
Total Saved with Sales: $20.41
Total Saved: $21.16
Giant: $71.32
Saved with Coupons: $0.75
Saved with Sales: $20.41
Yes, I really did buy twelve 64 oz. Gatorade! And no, we don’t actually drink the stuff. Here’s why I bought it. If you regularly read these posts, you know that Giant has gas reward deals where you can buy certain products and get savings on gas as a result. This week, if you bought 6 Gatorade you got $7.50 worth of free gas which brought the cost of the Gatorade down to $0.75 a bottle (after the gas savings). The guys at my husband’s work love drinks like this and so he’s going to take them there and resell them for $1.50 which will actually end up making us a profit of $9! They love it because they get a great deal and of course we obviously like it too. 🙂 Now that we got that cleared up….
We were needing to get gas but I didn’t have many gas points saved up and so we were only going to get something like $0.30 off a gallon. I had a number of rain checks for previous gas point deals and so I used them and was able to get enough points to only pay $0.07 a gallon! It’s a little hard to figure out how much a couple of the things cost because the Hefty plates and Crisco canola oil were both deals that I had bought some of the required items previously and buying these things just finished out the deal so to speak. I think the Hefty plates were free and the Crisco was something like $0.75 each after gas points.
The Blue Diamond almonds were $1.17 each after coupon/gas rewards. That is about half the price of what I can typically get the larger sized bags for plus I think the ones in the can taste better. Am I the only that thinks that, or is it true? I don’t mind the bagged ones on salads but I much prefer these from the can for snacking. I got the Newman’s Own salsa for just $0.33 each after gas rewards. I usually make my own salsa (I love to can!) but this year I skipped it because I was able to get so much salsa for free or super cheap like this. One of the things that I use salsa for a lot is Salsa Chicken Soup.
It didn’t work for us to get milk at the local dairy that we typically get it from, so again I was grateful for the Ibotta savings that I could use on the milk that I bought. The banana cost me all of $0.03 after a Checkout 51 offer. They have the banana offer pretty much every week, so if you eat a lot of bananas or even just occasionally, it would be worth signing up! I love using Fels-Naptha soap to get stains out of our clothing. It is super inexpensive and works really well too. I simply dampen the stained area, rub the bar of Fels-Naptha over and rub the fabric together. After a rinse usually the stain is gone. If not, I repeat the process again. Sometimes if the stain is stubborn, it will still be slightly visible. But almost every time, it disappears once the item is washed. I use it on grass stain, soiled baby clothes, food stains- pretty much everything but grease and ink.
BOUGHT:
- Store brand 2% milk $3.85
– got back $0.25 via Ibotta - Fels-Naptha soap $1.39
- Banana $0.28
– got back $0.25 via Checkout 51 - 12 Gatorade $2.00 each
- 2 Hefty plates $1.66 each
– bought with rain check - 2 Crisco canola oil $1.50 each
– bought with rain check - 6 Blue Diamond almonds $3.00 each
– bought with rain check
– used $0.75/2 Blue Diamond manufacturer coupon from Sunday newspaper coupon inserts - 6 Newman’s Own Salsa $2.00 each
– bought with rain check
GOT BACK:
- $15.00 in gas rewards savings for purchasing the Gatorade
- $12.50 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Hefty
- $10.00 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Crisco
- $10.00 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Blue Diamond
- $10.00 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Newman’s Own
Centerville Bulk Food: $0 (used grocery cash)
I was almost totally out of oatmeal and that is not a good thing when you make lots of granola and baked oatmeal! Thankfully I needed to do some other errands over in the direction of my favorite local bulk food store, so it made it easy to stop by and stock up. I also got poppy seeds, celery salt, aluminum free baking powder and cinnamon sticks while I was there too.
I honestly am not sure what my total was because I forgot to keep my receipt. But I used some grocery cash to pay for it, so it really didn’t matter too much anyway. In case you are curious, I think the oatmeal was $0.55/lb.
BJ’s: $0 (gift card and cash)
Used $1.00 cash
About a month ago I got an email from Groupon offering $5.00 off any purchase. I took a couple of minutes to peruse Groupon to see if there were any great deals that I could get with the offer and noticed an offer for a 60 BJ’s membership plus a $10 BJ’s gift card for $5! So I used my $5 off coupon and got it for free! I was almost totally out of cheese so I decided to use the $10 gift card that I got with my membership to help remedy that. Cheese prices have been so high lately. As a result, I’ve been trying not use as much and am hoping this 3 lbs. will get me through until I can find a good deal again.
- 3 lbs. sharp cheddar cheese $10.99
Credits: $57.50
The last couple of weeks I’ve been buying various items that are part of the Giant gas deals. Basically, you get points for purchasing the products and then you can redeem those points for gas. I was able to get $57.50 worth of gas for free as a result. And since I only buy the grocery items that are part of these deals because they either get me free gas or make me money, I put the savings back into my grocery budget. (To see the details of these purchases look at my previous Giant purchases under my What I Spent & What I Saved posts.)
December Monthly Budget Summary
Well, you may have remembered that I said that I was going to start posting a summary of how we are doing with our budget at the end of every month and since this What I Spent & Saved post is the last one for the year, it’s the week to let you not only know how I did at keeping on budget for the month, but also for the entire year!
December Grocery Spending by Week:
Week 1: $66.61
Week 2: $11.99
Week 3: $39.19
Week 4: $49.19
Week 5: $13.82
Total Spent for the Month: $180.80
Total Saved for the Month: $64.41 + $107.82 in gas savings
Under budget for the month by $19.20
Under budget for the year by $9.04!!
Of course I was super happy to end the year just slightly under budget!
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for helping to keep the lights on here at the Thrifty Frugal Mom!
Amanda
I am so glad I came across your blog. I only read a few articles so far and I needed to leave you a message. I am so motivated and actually intimidated that I wanted to asks your advice. We are a one income household, with barely enough to manage and we want(mostly husband) want to eat as much organic and all natural. Which includes organic milk which is $6 a gal. When our two boys 4 year old and 17 months who drink a lot of it. That’s about $80+ a month for just milk. Also meats and fruit and vegs organic racks a bill up to a lot a month when we are just barely trying to pay our rent. Any advice, tips, and stradegies? I’m going to start a price list and maybe try coupons but we don’t have Internet or a print working…
ThriftyFrugalMom
Hi Amanda! Thanks so much for taking the time to comment and for asking your question. Please don’t feel intimidated! My goal for doing these posts is to inspire, encourage and motivate others and I really don’t want people to read them and feel “less than” because their grocery spending is higher than ours. Everyone family is different and their needs and wants are going to be different.
Ah, yes, doing organic and all natural on a tight budget is always tough. And being a milk lover, I can appreciate your son’s enjoyment of milk. 🙂 Here are a couple of ideas for you. Hopefully they’ll at least help you brainstorm about ways that you can lower your grocery spending.
1. I know of people add water to their milk to make it stretch farther. I don’t know if that is something you’d want to do or not….you know, add a bit of water to each glass of milk that your kids drink. You could also check to see if there are any organic powdered milk options that would be cheaper than what you are already paying. I doubt that it would be a great option for drinking, but you could use it in baking and cooking and save that way.
2. You said you don’t have internet, so I’m guessing you don’t have a smart phone either. But in case you do, I’d highly recommend checking out Ibotta. Ibotta regularly has savings on any brand milk as well as sometimes other items too.
3. If you don’t already, try having at least one meatless meal a week. We love meat, but I’ve found several delicious recipes that we enjoy enough that we almost don’t miss the meat in them! One of those is this Tomato Basil Parmesan Soup.
4. Stretch Mexican type of dishes with beans and/or rice. I always add some black beans to our taco meat and sub part beans for the ground beef in chili too. We actually prefer both of those things that way!
5. If you have an Aldi grocery store nearby, stop by. They have a small, but growing selection of organic products at great prices! If you’ve never shopped there, be aware that you need to take your own grocery bags (or buy them there) and can only pay with cash or debit.
6. As much as you can, make your food from scratch. You may have seen my homemade Bisquick mix and cream soup recipes. I also make salad dressing, bread and lots of other things too. I don’t know how much you feel comfortable doing this sort of thing, but often you can make stuff cheaper than you can buy it!
7. Would it be cheaper to buy some of your groceries online? I’ve used Vitacost occasionally and especially when they have sales, have found their prices to be pretty decent.
8. Call your favorite organic companies and ask if they can send you any coupons. Actually, often if you just simply tell them which of their products is your favorite and why you love it, they’ll offer to send coupons without you even asking. Sometimes, you’ll get a no, but often they are more than happy to help you out. I’ve gotten some great coupons by doing this!
Whew, I got rather long winded! 🙂 But hopefully, something in this list will help you out. Obviously, while eating organic is great, if money is really tight you might consider just focusing on doing partial organic. I know many people who just buy organic fruits and veggies for things that are listed on the Dirty Dozen list.
At any rate, I hope you are able to figure something out. Blessings as you care for your little family!
Jen
Just ran across your blog from a Pinterest pin – really enjoy reading your grocery budget info. While I’m not sure I can do as much as you (amazing), it’s motivating and inspiring to read! I know I spend way to much on groceries and these are habits that will be hard to change (we eat meat with every meal)! Baby steps! Thanks and I”m excited to follow!
Linsey
Would it be possible for you to also post something similar to “what meals I make with the stuff I buy?”
ThriftyFrugalMom
Linsey- Thanks so much for the suggestion! I always appreciate when readers let me know what they want, dislike and enjoy. It’s super helpful!
I do have a couple of menu plans posted from a couple of years ago that you might enjoy looking at. It’s a little hard to do a post about what meals I make with what I buy each week because I usually plan my shopping trips around whatever is one sale. I tend to stock up on an item when it is super cheap which is why I might buy 10 cans of almonds one week but no produce etc. Does that make sense? I do have a fairly large stockpile though and what we eat is simple, easy and frugal so even if you followed my menus and bought everything at regular prices, it would still be inexpensive.
I hope to do more menu plans again soon! You are not the only reader that has asked about it…it’s a request that I frequently get.
Blessings!