Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Build Your Stockpile Slowly

One of the things that new couponers seem to be most concerned about is the part where building a stockpile at the beginning can cost quite a bit of money, especially if you're like me and get carried away by all the Shiny Deals! What if you're on a limited budget and don't HAVE a larger initial output of money to spend? How can you become an Extreme Couponer then?

My advice would be to start small. You don't have to get $300 of groceries for $100 at first, and as a matter of fact, you're not likely to! What you CAN do easily though is start making small changes to your shopping habits and slowly build a stockpile. You may not save as high of a percentage on your total grocery bill at first, but you will begin seeing small savings as you make change after change, and soon you'll see a difference.

One of the first things you need to realize is that Extreme Couponing isn't solely about coupons. It's also largely (possibly primarily) based on SALES PRICES. Start changing your habits to shop based around the sales prices and you will start seeing differences. My advice would be to pick a coupon blog that posts the weekly 'best deals' in your area and see what they recommend, and then pick one or two deals that appeal to you each time you shop to start building your stockpile.

For example:

At Jewel-Osco this week, one of their deals is the "Instant Savings Spotlight: Save $5 when you buy any ten participating products in a single transaction!" (This is listed on the back of their current sales flier if you have it, OR you can simply shop the store and look for the little orange "save an additional 50 cents" tags hanging below products all throughout the store.) This week it covers items like Ragu pasta sauce, Green Giant frozen vegetables, and 3 General Mills cereals (Honey Nut Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, or Lucky Charms), amongst a variety of other things. All potential staple items for many people.

If one of those items is a staple item in your household, this would be a great time to stock up on it without spending a lot of extra money! You can mix and match in this deal (which is what I did), but I'm going to focus on building a stockpile one item at a time for our purposes here. This is what it would cost you if you picked one of the items listed above (prices and sale valid only through TOMORROW, November 25th 2010):

Ragu pasta sauce, 26 oz jars, select varieties:
Step one is to check the shelf in this section and see WHICH varieties have the little orange tags on them, then select ten Ragu jars from amongst those. These individual jars of sauce are on sale this week for $1.49 each. When you buy ten in one transaction, the price falls to $.99 each. A total cost of $9.99 added to your grocery bill (tax not included) to stock up on ten jars of Ragu.

This deal gets even better when you add coupons. In the 11/14 Red Plum coupon circulars, there was a coupon for "buy 2 Ragu, get 1 pasta (up to $1.25 value) FREE". It just so happens that Barilla pasta is on sale at Jewel this week ($1.29 a box), AND it counts in the "buy ten, save $5" deal (dropping the per-box price to $.79) at Jewel too. If you have multiple copies of this coupon (either by getting multiple Sunday newspapers, as some of us do, or by asking friends you know to give you their coupons (my Mom gives me her circulars, for instance)), you will do better and better!

With ONE coupon, you could:
a) Buy ten jars of Ragu for $9.99, get one box of pasta (Barilla or any under $1.25) for free!
b) Buy nine jars of Ragu for $8.91, get one box of Barilla pasta (MUST be Barilla in this scenario because you need it to be your tenth item to get the sale price) FREE!

With TWO coupons, you could:
a) buy ten jars of Ragu for $9.99, get two boxes of pasta (Barilla or any under $1.25) for free!
b) buy eight jars of Ragu for $7.92, get two boxes of Barilla pasta (MUST be Barilla in this scenario because you need it to be your ninth and tenth items to get the sale price) FREE!

And so on. Just keep couponing!

Green Giant Frozen Boxed Vegetables, 7-10oz, select varieties:
Step one is to check the shelf in this section and see WHICH varieties have the little orange tags on them, then select ten from amongst those. These individual boxes of veggies are on sale this week for $1.00 each. When you buy ten in one transaction, the price falls to $.50 each. A total cost of $5.00 added to your grocery bill (tax not included) to stock up on ten boxes of frozen vegetables.

This deal gets even better when you add coupons. In both the 10/03 and 11/14 General Mills coupon circulars, there was a coupon for "save $.60 on 3 boxes of Green Giant frozen vegetables". Again, having multiple copies of this coupon will make this deal even better.

With ONE coupon, you could buy ten boxes of frozen vegetables for $4.40. 
With TWO coupons, you could buy ten boxes of frozen vegetables for $3.80.
With THREE coupons, you could buy ten boxes of frozen vegetables for $3.20. That's only $.32 a box!

At this point, you would either want to stop OR you would want to buy TWENTY boxes of frozen vegetables to save the extra money. Jewel does allow you to repeat this "buy ten, save $5" multiple times in the same transaction, so you could buy 20 of the applicable items in one trip and save $10. And, of course, keep couponing!

General Mills Cereals, select varieties:
Step one is to check the shelf in this section and see WHICH varieties have the little orange tags on them, then select ten from amongst those. These cereals are on sale this week for $2.49 each. When you buy ten in one transaction, the price falls to $1.99 each. A total cost of $19.99 added to your grocery bill (tax not included) to stock up on ten boxes of cereal.

This deal gets even better when you add coupons. You can find cereal coupons all over the internet (go some google searches, check some couponing blogs, or wait a bit, I'll talk more about coupon sources in the future), as well as in the weekly circulars. Let's say you have the "save $1.00 on 2 Honey Nut Cheerios" coupon from the 10/31 circular, and your family REALLY likes Cheerios.

With ONE coupon, you could buy ten boxes of HN Cheerios for 18.99.
With TWO coupons, you could buy ten boxes of HN Cheerios for $17.99.
With THREE coupons, you could buy ten boxes of HN Cheerios for $16.99.
With FOUR coupons, you could buy ten boxes of HN Cheerios for $15.99.
With FIVE coupons, you could buy ten boxes of HN Cheerios for $14.99. That's $1.49 a box!

At this point, you would either want to stop OR you would want to buy TWENTY boxes of HN Cheerios to save the extra money. Jewel does allow you to repeat this "buy ten, save $5" multiple times in the same transaction, so you could buy 20 of the applicable items in one trip and save $10. And, of course, keep couponing!

So there you have three examples of ways you could spend a mere (maximum, often less with coupons) of $20, $10 or $5 on your weekly shopping trip at Jewel and stock up on a bunch of cereal, pasta sauces (possibly with pasta), or frozen vegetables for your family.

Playing the sales is what will save you money; adding in the coupons is what will REALLY start making your savings spectacular!

Pick one deal like this per week and start building your stockpile that way. I'll try to post individual super deals like this each week to help you decide which ones might be a good buy for your family!

As a final note, if you're not already getting and saving the coupon circulars, I highly recommend you do it now! You don't have to clip ANY coupons, just save the circulars in a folder or bin somewhere. Write the date on the front of each circular when you get it and keep them in date order. Most coupon blogs will tell you where to find coupons each week and you only need to clip the ones you need. Saves a TON of time. There are even searchable coupon databases online (Coupon Mom has one). But to take advantage of it, YOU NEED TO HAVE THE COUPON CIRCULARS. And many of them have coupons that don't expire for up to a year. So start collecting and saving them now!

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