Posted: 8/5/2009 1:39:38 PM EDT
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I realize this forum is more about growing and processing your own food – at least that's what it seems like. But I'll throw out a concept here anyway – store coupons!
My son provides sufficiently so my daughter-in-law can stay home with my favorite "Idaho" grand-daughters! She likes to do her part also so she has taken up the "art" of couponing (if that can be a verb). She looks for store coupons that will double an offer, those for free, and those for cents off of a reasonable amount to make it worthwhile for her. She gets coupons from the internet, the newspaper, from trading with friends, and other places. She sorts, dates, and keeps them in a sort of scrapbook. She mostly uses coupons for food, cleaning products, and any other consumable from the grocery store. She is quickly building up a 1 to 2 year supply of food items in her pantry. Since she was the last born of 16 children from a family in Brazil, she isn't the best cook from scratch (although she is learning) so the food items she gets from the store is improving her menu, much to the delight of my son! Now to the numbers. She generally picks up $200 to $250 worth of products from the store and her average bill for such is $20 to $40. At that rate, her worth to the financial picture of that family is about $700 to $800 a month, and they are purchasing a surplus to store besides the food they eat! My wife and I are financially comfortable and don't have a food bill anywhere as large as hers so I haven't started this yet, but for a family on a budget with small children, or one who wants to increase their "in house" food supply, this could be a good way to do it. PS-As an aside, I mentioned my food budget isn't as high as my daughter-in-laws and this is true, but it did not go down proportionally as our four kids left home. My wife and I just decided to start buying higher quality food. It's 16% fat ground beef now instead of 30%. It's premium ice cream (infrequently for health reasons) instead of "Sno-Star" bargain ice cream, it's aged cheddar instead of mild, etc. Any other empty nesters out there? |
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My wife recently started to coupon also. Her last trip was $280 of goods for $115. It works for us.
I am interested to find out where she can access more coupons. She primarily relies on the Sunday paper right now. Any hints? I've got two young hungry boys and they like to eat! 
Thanks, Shane |
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Quoted:
My wife recently started to coupon also. Her last trip was $280 of goods for $115. It works for us. I am interested to find out where she can access more coupons. She primarily relies on the Sunday paper right now. Any hints? I've got two young hungry boys and they like to eat!
Thanks, Shane I work from home, and figured that I'd start doing some more coupon cutting since its easier to waste some time doing research at home vs. the office. I quickly realized that I didn't have the patience to really get into it. Take a look at Hot Coupon World. You can spend A LOT of time saving money! Kevin |
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Couple of things..
I think better food is worth paying more for. Better ingredients (no pesticides, no chemicals, etc) are better for you. Kind of hard to argue that As far as coupons... I've just started looking online and there are plenty of printable coupons online. (Good coupons.. not junk) coupons.com redplum.com I'm sure there are others... |