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The Best Online Grocery Coupon Sites

Guest Poster — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:10:36 +0000

Out of all a person’s expenses every month, groceries are certainly up there. Frugal families save money by cooking at home rather than eating out, but the costs still add up. However, groceries are one of the places where serious savings can be found, especially when buying store rather than name brand and using coupons. The days of looking through the newspaper with scissors handy are nearing an end, as online money-saving grocery coupon sites are en vogue. Here are some of the best ones to help you find those key discounts at major grocery chains, without a whole lot of hassle.

Best Sites to Find Online Coupons

Coupons.com: The first is still the best. Many sites feed off coupons.com for their discounts, so cut out the middleman and just go straight to the source. There’s no sign up required, and coupons are non-location specific, meaning they are available nationally. Coupons.com is any discount hunter’s first stop among the online coupon circuit.
Coupons Mom: Featured on Oprah, the Today Show, CNN, and other major media outlets, Coupons Mom boasts over 3 million members and counting. Just sign up for free and start saving. While not the prettiest looking site in the world, Coupons Mom is serious about discounts. Check out their tutorials for learning how to be a super shopper and save even more at the register.
Krazy Coupon Lady: The tech-savvy moms of Krazy Coupon Lady won’t stop until everyone is saving 50-90% at the register. Their site, formatted in an up-to-date blog style, offers printable discounts at major chains like CVS, Safeway, Albertsons, and Target, among others. Just look around, find a deal for what you need, and print it off. Coupon hunting has never been so easy.
Mambo Sprouts: For green-minded shoppers looking for organic goods, Mambo Sprouts is the place to go. The site offers discounts on healthy, green eating to help you save a healthy amount of green. Additionally, Mambo Sprouts is a community, featuring recipes, reviews of new products, and a section where visitors can link up with other like-minded shoppers and share tips and secrets.
Penny Pincher Gazette: The good folks at PP Gazette have gone to the trouble of taking all the best deals from many of the sites listed here and more and bringing them to one simple place. Membership is free, and PP Gazette also features discounts found in newspaper circulars in your area.
Red Plum: Red Plum is the new kid on the block and is making major waves. Its super easy to use format is attractive. Just select all the coupons you want and hit print. Red Plum offers national deals and location-specific ones as well. Make sure to enter your zip code to see what deals are lurking in your neighborhood.
Smart Source: Smart Source has thousands of coupons ready to print, free of charge with no sign up required. Get discounts on groceries and all sorts of household items. Sign up for their e-mail list to get notices for new deals and to get exclusive discounts. Smart Source also searches for deals around your area after you enter your zip code. Now isn’t that smart?

This article was written by Ellie W., who has written about ways to obtain accounting degrees online and saved money on tuition by taking classes online through onlineclasses.net

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Free Grocery Coupons

John S. — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:53:56 +0000

Balancing your personal budget can be very difficult during rough economic times. The current credit crisis has made it almost impossible for average working families to make ends meet. Families are struggling to pay their mortgage or rent while at the same time worrying if their job will be safe in the coming months. One solution to help your family save money is to make use of food coupons. Just in the past month my family has reduced our grocery spending by just over 20% from using coupons! Using printable grocery coupons in combination with other store sales and discounts can save you a lot of money. This cost savings will increase your cash flow which is very important in these uncertain economic times.

There are many levels as to how much money one can save using coupons. The more money you want to save, the more time and dedication is required. You can be a casual coupon clipper, choosing only the coupons for the products that you typically buy. This will save you a few dollars here and there over the course of a few weeks. While these savings are important and every bit counts, real savings takes a lot of work and a willingness to adapt and be flexible. There are a ton of online coupons available today, not to mention your Sunday paper coupons. I have put together a list of tips that my family has used to help us reduce our grocery spending by using coupons.

Double or Triple your savings – Anytime grocery stores offer triple coupons, you can get incredible deals. Most of the time, they limit your purchases to 20 coupons up to .99 cents. Coupons that redeem for .50 or .75 cents come in very handy when using them for triple coupons. A .75 cents coupon turns into $2.25 off. We typically get a lot free products just from redeeming these coupons. Double coupons are also nice and are more frequently offered by grocers.
Combine Coupons – Often times grocers will have their own coupons that can be combined with printable online coupons from the manufacturer. This is an opportunity to increase your savings. Throw in a triple coupon offer and you will probably actually make money off your transaction.
Subscribe to Coupon Resources – You can find many name brand coupons by signing up on the manufacturer’s website. Several companies will offer coupons on their site from time to time. There are also several websites and blogs that are dedicated to posting the best deals of the week per store and what coupons to use. One of my favorites is – Money Saving Mom.
Shop the Pharmacy’s – As I noted above, combining store coupons with manufacturer coupons can provide excellent savings. Several of the national pharmacy chains tend to extend these types of offers with rebates and rewards. The CVS Extra Card Bucks program is a good example. Planned correctly, there are many times you can walk away with a lot of goods and $0 out of your pocket by shopping at these stores.
Be Patient – One of the most important things I have learned when using coupons is to be patient! There are many times when I want to run out and redeem a coupon that I get in the Sunday paper. Often times, if you wait a week or two, that item will be on sale somewhere which will increase your savings. I have found that it is extremely important to be patient and flexible when using coupons. At times you may need to purchase a different brand of an item in order to maximize your savings.
Coupon Clubs – Look into forming a coupon club at work or in your neighborhood. Many times, people only need certain types of coupons and throw the rest away. For example, families without young children will never use diaper coupons. You can typically trade coupons you don’t use with friends and family for other coupons that you want that they don’t use.
Newspaper Subscription – The majority of the coupons that we use come from the Sunday newspaper. For a few dollars per month, I subscribe to our local weekend newspaper package that includes Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Since I don’t have time to read the entire week, let alone the weekend papers, this subscription lets me purchase the Sunday paper at a discounted rate compared to the newsstand. The coupon savings we get from purchasing the Sunday paper well outweighs the cost of the paper.
Be Creative – If you don’t want to pay for your Sunday paper to get coupons, then ask friends, family, or neighbors if you can have theirs. Many people throw them away every week. We get several coupons each week from our family who would normally recycle them. You may also consider asking your local library or businesses if you can have the coupons from their papers if they don’t use them.

For more money savings tips, check out my recent article on eHow titled – How to save money on your grocery bill

What tips can you offer that I don’t have on my list?

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5 Easy Steps to Cut Your Grocery Costs

John S. — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:02:07 +0000

This is a guest post by Corrie from “Cents”able Momma. Please check out her blog and consider subscribing to her RSS Feed.

Like PFI, I think it’s really important to have multiple streams of income, I also believe that it’s equally important to save money when possible. Most monthly expenses are pretty fixed, such as your mortgage (or rent), utilities, and insurance.

However, food and toiletries spending is one of our budget items that can vary widely. According to the US Department of Labor, the average American family of four spends $8,513 per year on groceries (about $709 per month). That seems like a huge figure to me. I have never spent close to that much on food in one month.

So, how can you reduce the amount of money that you spend on food?

Menu Plan – Each week, I sit down and plan what we are going to have for dinner each night of the week. I look at my calendar and account for our activities to try to plan “easy” meals for nights when we are busy. When you have a plan, you have a list for the grocery store. Plus, you’re less likely to order take-out when you know what you’re going to eat and your meat defrosted, etc.

Stockpile – I purchase items that we regularly use when they are on sale even if I don’t necessarily need the item that week. Then, when I do need it, I have it on hand and don’t have to pay full price. I have two sites that I use a lot to match sales with coupons to get the rock-bottom price for an item. The first is CouponMom (a free site) and the second is The Grocery Game (which has a 4-week trial for $1).

Make a List when you Grocery Shop – Once I have my menu plan and my stockpile items, I make a list of what I need to purchase at the grocery store that week. I shop my stockpile first to see if I already have the items that I need, and then I list the items that I need. For example, this week, I was able to spend about $30 on a week’s groceries for my family simply because I had many of the items in my stockpile already. When you get to the store, stick to the list and avoid the impulse items.

Use Coupons – I use coupons to reduce the amount of money that I spend on food and toiletries. However, I don’t just purchase an item because I have a coupon available. I am strategic about matching the coupons with sale prices and only purchasing items that I plan on using.

Buy Generic – There are many store brand items that taste almost the same as their name-brand counterparts. If the item is part of a recipe, it’s unlikely you’ll taste a difference. Try a few items to see if you can live with them. If not, you can always splurge on those must-have brand names (and purchase them on sale with a coupon).

Corrie is a stay-at-home mom of 2 young boys (5 and 2), who loves to save her family money. She blogs at www.centsablemomma.com about various ways to save money (and a few ways to earn a little extra).

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Turn Frugal Behaviors into a Game

John S. — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:35:35 +0000

photo credit: John LinwoodI recently posted frugal ideas for throwing a party for our oldest son’s 5th birthday. We ended up shopping for a lot of the clearance items that were left over from this past Halloween and found some really great decorations and candy for the upcoming event. Just this past weekend, we were at the local Super Target and came across all of their remaining Halloween items that had been marked down to 90% off! They had a lot of candy and decorations remaining that had been thrown into one aisle and were a complete mess. Since we had our oldest son with us, we decided to make a game out of the event. He loves pirates right now, so we told him he was a pirate looking for buried treasure and would give him things to look for. He loved it and we all had a blast and came away with a ton of candy, costumes for next year, and decorations for his birthday party. We spent over 1 hour looking for our buried treasure (or clearance items) and spent less than $10.

Later in the weekend, we took advantage of a triple coupon offer at one of the local grocery chains. My wife and I sorted through all of our coupons that were less than $1 off, as the grocer would limit the tripling to coupons .99 cents or below. It is strange to say, but we actually had fun together looking for these coupons, which took us a little over 1 hour to complete. Before we headed to the store, we sorted the coupons into categories (i.e. dairy, frozen items, soups, etc.) and split them up as evenly as possible so we each had a set. Once we had the coupons in hand, we set off to the grocery store. While at the grocery store, we split up and each looked for their respective deals with the pile of coupons that we both had. While we didn’t officially say it was a competition, my wife and I secretly tried to see who could get the best deals. It basically has become a game to us. Whoever can get the highest number of free products or discounted items wins! This wasn’t the first time, nor will it be the last, that we made a game out of shopping.

Recently, while at work, I was discussing credit cards with a few of my co-workers. Everyone in the group stated how they had cut their cards up or only used them in an emergency, except for me. In addition, every other person (besides myself) stated how he or she had gotten into such high credit card debt that they refused to use credit cards any longer. I applauded these co-workers for their efforts of breaking the credit card debt spiral that most people get themselves into. When it was my turn to tell about how my family uses credit cards as a form of passive income, most of the others were in shock. They couldn’t believe that we would charge everything we possibly can to our credit cards, just so we could bring in some extra income. I explained that we have strong personal money management skills and write down every single purchase we make on the cards and have a monthly budget to balance against. One lady commented to me that she could tell that this was a game to me by looking at how excited I got telling my story. She thought it was great to use these cards to my advantage.

After hearing the comments that my fellow co-worker made to me about treating credit card purchases as a game, I then realized that it was something that actually gave me excitement. I was treating these purchases as a game to see how much money I could make from using a credit card. In the paragraphs above, I provided 3 recent examples of how my family and I actually make a game out of our frugal behaviors. The post-Halloween shopping experience with our son was made into a treasure hunt. The trip to the grocery store was made into a competition between my wife and I against each other. How we use credit cards and what we can redeem from accumulating points and rewards was also a game. I then started to think about all the other daily activities that our family participates in. It was startling to think that almost everything we do that is frugal we turn into a game! These activities are actually a form of entertainment for our family.

Do you treat any of your frugal behaviors as a game? Do you make competitions out of shopping for clearance items?

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