Giving New Meaning to Parenting

Yet another tactic I use to cut food costs is a subscription coupon program.  You know those emails you get periodically telling how someone saved tons of money on their groceries and it only costs $20 a month?  Turns out they’re telling the truth.

Bear with me now, and I’ll explain.

We all know that we can save money using coupons, right?  Okay, check.  If you happen to combine a coupon with an existing sale, your dollars are stretched further.  The difficulty comes in the time it takes to track all the sale items and match with coupons.  What if you have a coupon in your stash from a week or two ago… does it apply to a sale that is going on now?

The service I subscribe to takes care of that for me.  They maintain a database of coupons that come out in the weekly paper as well as online coupon offerings.  The second part of the database is a detailed list of all items that are discounted each week at local grocery stores.  I log in every week and can pull a list of the sales; if any unexpired coupons apply to those sale, they’re listed as well.  All I have to do is print my list and go through my files to pull the appropriate coupons for the week.

Do I pay for this service?  Yes, it costs $20 a month.  I save that amount and more every time I use it, so the service pays for itself.  Yesterday I went to the store and spent about $60.  My receipt shows another $50 in sales and coupon savings.  For some stores there are rebate programs but most of the savings are realized with the sale/coupon combination.

In addition, there is an affiliate program so if someone signs up using my membership number, I get $5 per month as long as they are members.  If 4 people sign up under me, my membership is free, and if more sign up I can actually realize earnings.  I haven’t bothered much with that, but a friend of mine has and I believe she’s participating in the program for free right now.

There is a reason why I am deliberately not naming the program: the one I am part of only applies to stores locally.  I did some online research and see that there is a web site offering a similar service available in all 50 states (my apologies to readers outside the US).  If you look at the FAQ section they list what stores in each state are included and the price is lower than what I’m paying – although my service covers 5 stores each week.

A big caveat to participating in this program is the importance of only adding things to my list that I would use anyway.  It’s tempting to buy things just because they’re super cheap, but if my family won’t eat them then I end up wasting money.  I do sometimes get things that are free or nearly free and donate to my local food pantry.

So there you have it: spammy “save money on grocery” e-mails explained. 

by AmyL

Photo graciously provided by Roadsidepictures, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved

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