frugality

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The following is a guest post from Shelly at Coupon Teacher:

Time. One word means different things to different people. The phrase “time is money” is probably familiar to all of us. Many times I am asked, “Shelly, how do you have time for all the coupons?” My response is usually a joking, “No kids yet.” Honestly, as a teacher, I have 22-26 kids for 10 months out of the year. I also bring home work on a daily basis, attend church, and spend as much time as I can with my husband. So how do I make time for coupons, rebating, and blogging?

1. I think of it as a part time job. Coupons and rebates have quite literally saved us more money this year than I would have earned at a part time job. The plus side is flexibility and no extra taxes!

2. I enjoy it. It is much easier to find time to do things we enjoy.

3. I cut and sort coupons while watching t.v. with my hubby. When the channel flipping starts, I have something to do!

4. I take refreshing breaks from it now and again. I didn’t even buy a newspaper this past week.

5. I utilize many resources available on the web for coupon match-ups and deals (including Deal Seeking Mom!).

6. I love the feel of giving away groceries to a needy family or friends in a pinch. I have given away hundreds of dollars in groceries for pennies.

People are asking me the wrong question. It shouldn’t be, “How do you have the time?” The question should be, “Why do you make the time?” The answer is to help my family to become financially successful during hard economic times.

Shelly is the author of Coupon Teacher, a 4th grade teacher, and a deal seeker!

Photo by grand grrl

As a follow-up to Tara’s The Power of Coupons article, I’d like to share a few tips that helped me reduce my weekly grocery bill for our family of five from $167.50/week to $89/week in two-months, without giving up my sanity, red meat, pricey dairy products, or daily produce.

Have you ever thought the following?

• I don’t have time or patience to clip and organized coupons,
• I can never save enough money to make it worth my while,
• I’m too brand-loyal to even find value from coupons,
• My family eats too much red meats, dairy, and fresh produce; coupons will never make a dent in my grocery bill,
• My goal is not to have a $40 grocery bill–but, saving $40 from my grocery bill would be great,
• My family is not willing to eat frozen or canned fruits or vegetables just because I have a coupon for them,
• Store-hopping is not worth the gas in my tank,
• Searching circulars is too much work,
• Organizing a whole week’s menu is mind-boggling,
• I despise getting newspaper ink on my hands (no, really…),
• Ugh…all this coupon lingo is so confusing, and
• Since I save enough money with my frugal family-fun day trips, homeschooling educational goodies, etc. I’ll just attribute my high grocery bill to paying for convenience…or laziness

If you felt any of these concerns above, don’t worry…I felt every single one of them. So, if I can be such a Confused Coupon Criticizer, and still cut my grocery bill in half in 2-months, you can too!

Tips to cutting your grocery bill in half in less than 2 months:

• Involve your kids. Make coupon finding, circular reviewing, and grocery shopping a frugal family fun activity. If it wasn’t for my girls to keep me motivated, I would have given up long ago. With every “Mama, I saved $1!” surprised cheer, I was committed to coupon and circular shopping, for the joy first, and then the savings.

• Turn boring, cranky errands with kids into a fun family field trips. People are amazed how much fun my three girls and I have as we travel the grocery aisle. Many comment how it’s a pleasure to see little astute shoppers, instead of whining, crying, bored kids dragging behind the cart. Since we’re homeschoolers, we’re always talking about math too.

• Stop Clipping Coupons; Organize Them! I use a 3-ring file-pocket and filler-paper binder. While big and clunky, it has everything in its right place. The front side has circulars filed by week, with special fles for “store-specific coupons” (drug-store specific coupons) and “outings” (restaurants, events/field trips). I use filler paper to write out my weekly menu, which for me only lists the meat I’m going to cook for dinner each night.  Also, I list “deals” at different stores. I use binder sleeves to put the receipts in for the week, and have baseball-card sleeves to organize rebates or special little coupons with no particular place to go.

• Learn the lingo right from the start. It only takes minutes to review all of Tara’s “Learning the lingo” article.

• Think Strategic Shopper, not Cheap Couponer. CouponMom.com found that 47% of women who use coupons are educated, affluent women who choose to use coupons, not necessarily out of necessity but for the savings.

• Let the Pros “tell” you what to do. Time is money, so stop wasting it. I follow the blog posts of Deal Seeking Mom and the forums of Coupon Mom. When I first got started, I was following nearly a dozen blogs, which left me confused and overwhelmed. Now that I know both website’s posting schedule, I’m a loyal follower to only these two frugal and savvy moms.

• Survey your starting point, then set a realistic goal. My husband and I use Quicken Online for free. [Con: It saves data for just over a year; so, we’re looking around for another program. Any tips?]
  • We tracked my grocery bill for 6-months and averaged $167.50/week.
  • Realistic goal: Save 25% in Month-1, then 50% by Month-3.

• Track your spending. I have a tiny notebook in my purse that I write all my purchases for the day then submit to Quicken Online at night. [I’m thinking of  getting a Blackberry, so I can submit purchases virtually on the spot].

• Don’t drive around to save pennies; fit detours for dollars. I keep my coupon binder in my car, so if I happen to drive by one of the stores with special “deals”, I make a quick detour.

• Shop at discount stores, such as Price Rite, Save-a-lot and ALDI’s. I found that Price Rite has the most name brands and best prices, and they carry halal meats (Islamic-permissible foods, like Kosher for Jewish people). Save-a-lot has an email list with $5/off sign-up coupons; and they always have the cheapest bananas in town. ALDI often has good deals beyond grocery shopping that are worth making the additional trip.

• Only use cash. If you can, cash forces you to stay within your budget and stretch the bill further, rather than resorting to a debit or credit card’s unseen dollars & cents. [It leads to a debt-free life too].

• Be patient, persevere, and work on one goal at a time. The success of saving with the non-coupon-clipping, circular-organizing system; is that with every new week you add dozens of more coupons into your personal database. Therefore, you potentially save more money each and every week. Now, that I reached my grocery-bill goal one month early, I’m starting to get into the drug-store coupon/circular shopping strategies, Old Navy Weekly (no luck yet), and other fun savings.

• Find a network and stick with these smart & fun chicks! I love Deal Seeking Mom’s community. Tara & her guest bloggers’ posts are always easy to read and understand and are extremely welcoming and encouraging for any Frugal Newbie, such as myself.

What type of couponer are you? Is your goal to get as many groceries as you can for the least amount of money or just to save on your grocery bill?

Ponn M. Sabra, MPH is a homeschool mom of three girls living with a rare brain disorder and best-selling author of “Empowering Women to Power Network.” Ponn blogs at https://www.EmpowerWomenNow.com and https://AmericanMuslimMom.com, the first and only online magazine that offers free tips, tools, reviews, contests and resources for Muslim Moms living in America [Non-Muslims are welcomed too!].

Photo by Matt McGee

The following is a guest post from Jean Chatzky:

Being a financial reporter (not to mention a mom to two teens), I know the importance of teaching kids the value of a dollar. Teaching kids money management at an early age, as well as instilling in them the importance of a “good deal,” will help them later in life when the time comes for them to be on their own financially.

Here are some of my favorite tips for raising a financially savvy, deal-seeking kid:

Put the Money in Their Hands

Some families don’t believe in giving allowances to kids, but I do, with certain restrictions. If you’re going to give your kids an allowance, make sure it comes regularly each week — like a paycheck — so they can start to budget for things they’d like to buy or goals that they’re saving for.

Parents usually give $0.50 or $1.00 per week in kindergarten and then give a raise of $0.50 or a dollar each year. This will fluctuate, though, depending on what you expect your kids to pay for. At ages 6-8, they might be responsible for paying for their own candy. At around ages 10-12, you might expect them to pay for movie tickets or trips to the mall food court with friends. If you’d like them to start putting away a portion of their allowance each week to a college fun, or give away part a percentage to charity, you’ll probably want to give them a little more.

The Basics of Budgeting

Once they’re making their own money, whether it’s from an allowance, babysitting, etc., teach them the importance of budgeting. One of my favorite strategies is the envelope approach. Give your kids a series of envelopes and have them label them according to the different things they plan to use the money for. For example, they might have envelopes labeled spend, save, charity, etc.

Let Them Shop

Once a month, sit down with your child and make your grocery list for the week. Then, let your kid do the sleuthing for coupons. Give them the Sunday paper and let them clip away, or direct them to the Internet where they Google coupon codes. Take your kid on the shopping trip (coupons in-hand) and after you’re done, show him or her the receipt with the breakdown on how much you’ve saved.

Set a Good Example

One of the biggest pitfalls parents encounter when trying to raise a money-smart kid is not practicing what they preach. If you’re talking to your kids about the importance of budgeting, saving and the value of a dollar, you’ll want to convey that in your own actions. If your kids see you dealing with money choices responsibly in your own life — for example, if you’re shopping for a new car, you might tell them while you’d love to have a brand new BMW, but you can only afford the Toyota, so that will have to do — they’ll have an easier time making decisions like these and dealing with the fact that they too can’t have everything they want when they want it.

What steps are you taking to raise a deal-seeking kid?

Jean Chatzky is financial editor for NBC’s Today Show, a columnist for More Magazine and the author of “The Difference.” She blogs daily at www.jeanchatzky.com.

I’ve teamed up with Propel® and DivineCaroline to write a series of inspiring and motivational posts to encourage women to enhance and streamline their lives. Propel’s mission is to enhance your life, give you the ability to move through obstacles and live a more streamlined, energetic life.

I married my husband knowing that he had some debt to pay off, but we thought it would be simple to pay it off quickly between the salaries we were earning. After creating numerous budgets and spending plans and eventually failing at each one, it became readily apparent that the approach we were taking was never going to get us very far.

After analyzing where our money was going, a pattern emerged. We would cut back our spending dramatically, but after a period of sticking to our plan, we would start to feel deprived and end up splurging and spending more than ever. As much as we wanted to pay off our debt, we started to feel resentful that we were working so hard all week and weren’t able to treat ourselves to small luxuries every now and then.

Don’t get me wrong – I greatly admire those people that have the willpower and determination to cut their spending to the very barebones necessities in order to pay off their debts. But it was only when we were completely honest with ourselves and admitted that it wasn’t an approach that was going to work for us that we began making real headway on our finances.

The key to finally figuring out what worked for us was learning how to treat ourselves without breaking the bank. How did we do this? Coupons, of course – and here are my five favorite ways to treat ourselves right now.

• Bath & Body Works Free Trial Size w/ Purchase Coupon
• Free T.G.I. Friday’s Burger Coupon
• $10/$25 Yankee Candle Coupon
• $10 Off Any Purchase At The Great Indoors
• Free Aveda Smooth Infusion Sample

Using coupons like these we were able to balance our wants of eating out and treating ourselves to non-necessities while still cutting back and ultimately reaching our goal of being debt free.

Are you one of those people that are able to cut back dramatically and stick to it, or do you treat yourself now and then? What are your best tips and tricks for sticking to a budget?

How did you enhance your life today? Chime in every day at You.Propelled on DivineCaroline for another chance to win $5,000 to pursue your dream. The more friends you bring, the better your chances of winning.

Photo by Darren Hester

I’ve teamed up with Propel® and DivineCaroline to write a series of inspiring and motivational posts to encourage women to enhance and streamline their lives. Propel’s mission is to enhance your life, give you the ability to move through obstacles and live a more streamlined, energetic life.

I cringe every time I hear someone say, “Why bother using coupons? All that clipping and hassle to save just a few cents . . . “ Chances are if you’re reading this post, you already know the amazing savings potential of coupons, but for those of you that may be on the fence, I just want to share what a powerful financial tool coupons can be.

We struggled for many years to get our finances in order. Having five children within the span of five years was never our intent, but it was a blessing we welcomed with open arms.

When I lost my job at 7.5 months pregnant with our first child, I was thrust into the position of being a stay-at-home mom. Couponing wasn’t a choice at that time; it was a necessity. As a first-year pipefitter’s apprentice, my husband’s wages barely covered our budget. Back then I used the Grocery Game to plan my shopping trips, and it felt good to be able to contribute something to our household finances in the way of big savings at the grocery store.

Fast-forward seven years through four more children and three layoffs, and we’ve been through even tougher times. Coupons were crucial to making it through those years that were such a struggle. With the advent of money-saving blogs, I was able to learn even more tips for saving, and I found that not only could I keep my pantry well stocked, but I was also able to give back to others by donating items that we could not use.

Today coupons are no longer a necessity for meeting our family’s budget, but I continue to use them. Why? Because the savings potential is much more than just a couple of cents here and there. Learning how to maximize our savings through coupons and careful budgeting has allowed us to build a substantial emergency fund, something I never thought we’d be able to do. Even more amazing than that, through the Cash For Clunkers program and a generous dealer incentive, we were recently able to purchase a new car with cash. I can’t even describe how good it felt to walk into that dealership knowing we had the upper hand and were in full control of our purchase.

You might be tempted to think that our family is just an isolated case, but there are examples of many other bloggers that have shared how instrumental coupons have been in living a debt-free life. Just look at Crystal from Money Saving Mom’s amazing goal of paying cash for a house. Or look at how Mercedes from Common Sense with Money was able to pay off her family’s new van within 6 months.

I’d like to encourage you all to see just how much you can save this week with coupons. If you’re new, you’ve got nothing to lose. The information is right at your fingertips, and it’s completely free. Even just $10 a week is a fantastic start, and I’m confident you can do it. I have a feeling that once you get started, you’ll start to wonder why you never do this sooner, and I look forward to you sharing your savings stories!

How did you enhance your life today? Chime in every day at You.Propelled on DivineCaroline for another chance to win $5,000 to pursue your dream. The more friends you bring, the better your chances of winning.