grocerystore
Photo from Jeff Keen

Yesterday I read a post on beingfrugal.net about saving money using coupons. The exercise was to see how many groceries could be bought with $50 and was sponsored by a coupon company. The whole point was to see how much could be saved using coupons. You can view the video here.

I was a bit surprised by the results, mostly by how non-frugal they were. For starters, almost every item was packaged junk food and all of it was brand name packaging. Even the chicken breasts and the bacon were in packets with brand names on them. While Lynnae succeeded in saving money on the products she purchased, you can definitely stretch $50 much, much further.

As far as I know, we don’t have grocery coupons here in Australia, but we do have junk mail catalogues and a similar principle applies. What is on sale is more often than not packaged, brand name food. If you use catalogues (or coupons) to try and save money on the groceries, there are a few things to keep in mind:

  • Buying things that you wouldn’t normally buy just to get a discount isn’t a saving.
  • Often you can save more by buying the same product in no name brand than buying discounted brand names.
  • Advertised specials are often the packaged “junk” food. Sticking to the real foods and cooking from scratch will save you more money, not only on the groceries, but also on your health care! Favour fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, and  basic staples (for example, plain rice, rather than flavoured rice in a box with added nasties like preservatives and artificial flavourings) and use herbs, spices and condiments to add flavour and variety. Think “food” not “grocery” and check out your local markets, butchers, bakers, greengrocers for savings.
  • Buying two for one can be a saving, but if it is not stored properly, or you don’t eat it all before the used by date, then you have thrown any savings you may have made into the garbage. This applies to buying in bulk. Make the most of your savings, don’t throw them away.
  • Ok, so you normally buy that item and it’s on special. Is it a bargain? Yes! I’m not saying that you can’t save money using supermarket catalogues/ coupons. I find this is particularly true for non-grocery staples such as washing powder. But more often than not, there are ways to save much more money at the supermarket by steering well clear of supermarket catalogues.

Have you read these posts?