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Have Fun Saving and Sharing Tips

April 15, 2010 By The Recipe Mom Leave a Comment
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Finding great deals is an exciting adventure, but it is not an adventure to relish alone. By sharing shopping tips with friends and family, everyone can participate and be enveloped with the excitement of scoring the best deals. Here are a few ideas on how to share some shopping tips with those you love.

Over the past year, with the recession growing on people’s minds, the use of coupons has become an art. Help others find this fine art and teach them what you know. Compare receipts after every shopping trip to see who saved the most, both in total dollars and percentage of the final bill. For instance, one person may have saved $100 on their trip, while the other saved almost 80%.

Get together for coupon clipping and see who can find the most coupons for a certain item, or who can find the biggest coupon amount. Rotate homes each week and make sure you have some food at this get together.

List an item each week and see who can get it the cheapest. Let’s take Cheerios as an example. By the end of the week, the goal is to be able to combine the most coupons and store deals to get a box of Cheerios the cheapest. Of course, this is only one idea as far as making a game with your shopping habits.

Another possibility is to go through the week and see who can find the best deal, not even worrying about the category that it is in. Let’s say someone found a pair of shoes that were originally $300 and ended up with them, in hand, for $50, while another person purchased a certain brand of cereal for free, even though it never goes on sale. This game will have to be judged on a personal system, between friends because it is difficult to assign a point value across categories. The winner is whoever the group thought got the best deal on what they bought.

This goes right along with making a game of frugality. Invite a group of friends over and have each one bring a dish. To add to the difficulty, create a spending cap when making the dish. For instance, no prepared dish will be over five dollars. This forces people to get clever with their shopping and allows everyone else in attendance to get different ideas for frugal shopping and cooking. If the honor system won’t work for you, then have everyone bring in their receipts and award a prize to the best dish and also the least expensive meal.

The point is, when you share your shopping tips with others, everyone can win. Money is saved and fun is had at the same time. By sharing shopping tips with friends and family, you have just one more avenue to connect on, and isn’t that the whole point? Sure, saving money is great, but why not have some fun with those closest to you at the same time.

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Using Coupons and Making It Work

April 13, 2010 By The Recipe Mom Leave a Comment
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Ever wonder what it would be like to get paid for buying what you were going to buy anyway? Let’s say you walk into the store for a loaf of bread and walk out with a couple extra bucks as well as your bread. Pretty neat huh? Coupons can do that and what a great deal. What if you took a coupon and combined it with a sale on that particular item? Would coupons be even more enticing? As an added bonus, the store you shop in is having a triple-coupon day where all of your coupons are suddenly worth three times as much as you thought. How’s that for a good deal?

Coupon using can be a hard and stressful work but they can work for you. There are a few simple tips to help keep you sane while snipping away at the sales pages:

The Numbers – If you are going to be serious about using coupons there is one simple rule; you can never have too many coupons. The more you have, the better your chance to score a deal when you need it. Many people have started purchasing two Sunday papers in order to double the number of coupons on hand at any given time. This also works well during the buy-one-get-one sales because you have a coupon for the item you buy as well as for the item you get, thus making your bought item that much cheaper.

Get Organized – Getting a simple zip-close binder with laminated baseball card protector sheets will simplify your life beyond your wildest dreams. Keeping organized is the key to successful coupon using. Having a zippered binder makes sure that no coupons are lost and also protects your valuable pen, calculator and even cash stored in the nifty side pockets.

Sort Them – The baseball card protector sheets allow like coupons to be combined into a single sleeve and even divided up by date. Labeling the sheets just like the isles in your favorite grocery store will allow you to pull only the coupons that you need. It can also give you a quick glance at the expiration dates to make sure you are not left stranded at the checkout.

Finding Deals – Checking the weekly flyers put out by your local stores. Many of these fliers can be found online or come in the mail. Don’t forget to check at the front of the store as well because many places are now putting special coupon books up front for the customers that physically come in.

Utilize Websites – Check around for websites which pool all of the local deals. Different sites will also help you know when to combine a sale with certain coupons. Taking the time to do a little sale research before you make that trip to the store is wise. It can save big bucks when it comes to using those coupons. A good number of sites will also list all of the best values between compositing stores, such as where you can find the best price on crackers or milk. Ask around to find out which sites are local to your area.

Basically, the whole idea is to keep the coupons easily accessible and organized. Just follow these simple steps and before you know it you will be on your way to coupon clipping heaven. Not to mention huge savings and great bargains.

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The Butcher, Fish Monger and Local Produce Markets

April 8, 2010 By The Recipe Mom Leave a Comment
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The local grocery store is the one place most all of us go to shop. Yet it might not be the cheapest place or the most time friendly way to do our shopping. Befriending the butcher is the oldest trick known to shopping. It started back in medieval times and continues today but not as strong. With supermarkets importing much of their food, finding the right place to shop is growing more difficult by the day.

Depending on your shopping habits and how much money you wish to save, the factors on where to shop will be a huge decision on where to shop. Many of the smaller cities still have a butcher, fish monger and even a local farmer’s co-op where many items can be purchased for a fraction of the cost. Larger cities, with a greater industrial industry seem to be moving away from these localized specialty shops for more of a bulk shopping club type store.

The Butcher

Finding a local butcher is the best thing to do if your family consumes large amounts of meat. The butcher can provide certain cuts that you may not always find in larger supermarkets. Not only can they make specialty cuts of meat for you, they always know what is fresh and can provide tips on how to prepare certain types of meat.

Many butchers also can provide lower prices on meat because they are distributing operations. When the meat has to be sold to a supermarket, you have to pay the mark-up from the butcher as well as the supermarket that bought the product. Many butchers, if you get to know them over time, will be able to let you know exactly when meat goes on sale.

If you are looking for the best possible deal, inquire about purchasing an entire portion of a feed animal, or splitting one with your friends. Buying a whole cow or pig will stock your freezer, allow you to get the cuts you desire and can hold a huge reduction in price due to the quantity. This is the way to go when looking for the cheapest, but best quality meat that money can buy.

The Fish Monger

For the seafood lovers out there, finding a fish monger to befriend can also aid in cost savings. The fish monger has the inside scoop as to what fish is the most fresh and can prepare different cuts depending on whether you are planning for sushi, a catfish fry or a high quality tuna steak. If you get to know the fish monger, he or she can also suggest new items that you may like, but would have never thought about buying in a local grocery store; they may just turn out to be your favorite type of seafood.

The Local Produce Market

Between farm co-ops and local open-air markets, local produce is, almost always cheaper than buying from a store. Many shops import their produce, which means the goods are plucked from the ground or tree well before they are ready. This is done in hopes that by the time it is unpacked at the store, it is still in a semi-decent quality. Getting your produce from a local farmer will help support a local business as well as offer the freshest produce your money can buy. It is a win-win situation.

Take a look at the family eating habits. Then keep an open eye for local retailers who respect the food you eat instead of trying to make a dollar off of everything you buy. Not only can the butcher, the fish monger and the local produce market save you money and time but they can change the way you look at making those delicious meals.

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