Saturday, January 24, 2009

Saw this on WKYC.com

You know you can clip coupons from your local newspapers but did you know that you can get coupons straight from manufacturers and stores, and not just for grocery or pharmacy products?

One of the best websites for coupons and refunds of all kinds is Susan Samtur's Refundle Bundle as she shows where companies advertise their products, sometimes through cash incentives.

Samtur says some companies have on-going promotions for their products where a customer sends in box tops, labels, etc. directly to the company and gets a refund, which may be cash, gifts or free product coupons.

Samtur's website also offers the Refundle Bundle Magazine that contains hundreds of offers every month or there's the instant savings of her Select Coupon Club.

If retail coupons are your target, check out Coupon Surfer for coupons for stores like Gap, Target, Barnes & Noble, just to name a few. There's also a "Deal of the Day" on Coupon Surfer every day.

Your next stop should be the Hot Coupon World website. That's where you will find deals and more.

Hot Coupon World is a "community" of more than 100,000 shoppers across the U.S. where you can find deals, talk on forums and a coupon database for you to trade your coupons with others. The database has more than 60,000 coupons listed.

Then there's Refund Cents where you can download printable coupons from the website immediately.

© 2009 WKYC-TV

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Sam's Club

If you have any interest in a wholesale club membership, now would be a good time to invest in a Sam's Club membership. Their regular ones cost $40 for a year, but they are currently running a promotion and give you a $25 gift card (to Sam's) when you sign up for a new membership. So, it's really like a $15 membership for a year, and you do get a card for someone else in your household. I would encourage you to call your local Sam's first to ensure that they're still offering this promo.

I did a quick run-thru last weekend and the price of milk, butter, flour, cheese, sugar already make it well worth it for me!

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

We all LOVE FREE

If you sign up HERE at Art Cow you can get 1200 FREE picture prints, just for registering.
Get all your Christmas pics printed!!!

Check it out!

Monday, January 12, 2009

Meal Planning, Forms, and Checklists???

I realize I am a complete dork, however, I am still more excited than I could possibly express in this website. You can find checklists to take stock in your pantry, freezer, and cupboards. You can also find charts to help you organize your meal planning. Keep up the good work!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

More Meal Planning Tips

It seems as if everyone in blogland is recommending meal planning as a cost effective way to strengthen your budget during this economic crisis we seem to be in. You can read more tips here from Stretching a Buck as she goes through step by step how she does it.

One thing that's been buggin me about so many recent posts I've read about meal planning is that it seems like there are tons of families that are scrimping on food that they really enjoy just to save money. I just don't like that -- I want to eat what I want to eat...so I just find a way to do it. For us, if we avoid eating out or buying Starbucks/Caribou often, then there is more money in our budget to buy food products we enjoy and just eat them at home. As I read some food blogs out there, it makes me so grateful to have a husband who will eat leftovers or a bowl of cereal as an add-on to his dinner.

In the Cleveland area, there are tons of places to buy good food and ingredients from and not have to go without. I've found that at the rate I go through flour/butter/eggs/sugar/brown sugar, it's cost effective for me to buy from Costco. Well, actually my mama buys from Costco and I pay her back. (do this with girlfriends who have a wholesale membership) Sometimes my mama and I will buy something together and split it (think spices). Also, I buy all of my spices either from the Mediterranean Imported Foods stand in the Westside Market or from the Berlin Bulk Foods store in Amish Country. The Mediterranean Imported Foods stand has all sorts of exotic spices that you can buy as much as you want (like only 1/2 an ounce) and sells vanilla bean pods for $2 a piece (and they're usually 8 inches long). With those prices, my food budget remains in tact!

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Feeding Your Family for Less

Thanks to all the women who braved the icy roads to come out last night! We really enjoyed being able to share with you our ideas and practices that we've found effective. This post is really the same stuff we went over last night -- we just wanted to make sure you could send it out to anyone who wasn't there, or a sister or friend. Keep in mind that these are just our recommendations. Please, please, please, do whatever works for you....but it won't hurt to try something new once in a while too!

By the way, we got the idea for this outline here

1) Make a meal plan.
  • Plan around grocery store sales – Look through the grocery fliers and plan out what meals you can make with what you purchase while it’s on sale (If you like/use a product that is on sale, by all means stock up!)
  • Plan around your pantry – take an inventory of what is in your freezer and use it! Plan out what meals you can make with what is in your pantry/freezer/fridge, and only buy the other ingredients that you’ll need to make those meals
  • Making a multi-week meal plan (3 weeks works best for Sarah) reduces the number of trips to the store and will free up money in your budget to buy and extra bottle of wine,
    go out to dinner, or make an extra-special dinner.

2) Choose recipes with a low price per serving.

  • Build meals around less expensive meats like split chicken breasts, pork chops and stew meat.
  • Check out $5 Dinners (www.5dollardinners.com) for meals that can be made for $5 or less
  • Eat your leftovers! If you can’t eat the actual leftover, then recycle them (if you make a roasted chicken one day, later in the week you can make chicken soft tacos or chicken salad)
  • Try vegetarian once a week. Without meat, a meal automatically becomes cheaper. Rice and beans as a side dish is an easy addition to any meal that fills you up and keeps money in your pocket. Be creative with rice and beans. Another great inexpensive vegetarian option is omelet’s – you still get your protein, but without the expensive meat.

3) Use coupons for your entire meal.

  • Seek out coupons for every component of your meals-main dish, sides, veggies and dessert.-before deciding check your coupons for something that might work!
    You can find coupons in many places.
    o Sunday Paper
    o Websites/Blogs (some stores do NOT take printed coupons, you need to ASK first)
    o Magazines
    o Grocery Stores
    o Coupons Swaps (asking neighbors/relatives for their Sunday coupons will help you obtain multiples)
    · You can even do this for going out to eat!
    Entertainment books are great (lots of B1G1 free meals) after you’re done with dinner go somewhere else for dessert and use a coupon there too! Also try
    http://www.restaraunts.com/

4) Opt for frozen foods.

  • Frozen chicken & veggies are cost effective & nutritional.
  • Frozen food on sale are great to stock up on and easy to whip up when you are short on time
  • Frozen convenience foods (TV dinners, prepared meals) and NOT cost effective and generally not cost effective.
  • Buying large quantities of meat on sale separating into smaller portions at home and freezing is cost effective and fills the freezer!
  • Learn which stores sell which products you like and buy what tastes good to you. Aldi’s sells delicious chicken breasts – 5 lbs for $7. Target usually has the cheapest on Tyson frozen chicken products.

5) Be smart about private label items. In many cases you can save by opting for the private label over a brand name, but by being smart about coupons, you can often get the brand name for less than the private label.

  • Use coupons whenever possible. Remember that Giant Eagle and Dave’s Supermarkets both double coupons up to $1.00, which can greatly reduce the price.
  • If an item is on sale for buy-one-get-one-free, you can use two coupons – which brings the price down a lot!
  • Be brand flexible – for example, if you love Colgate Max Fresh toothpaste, but a store has Crest toothpaste on sale for $2, how much is the extra cost for Colgate at that point? Many grocery stores will have sales on Health and Beauty products, whereas stores like Marc’s/Target/Walmart typically offer the cheapest prices.
  • Avoid buying Health & Beauty, cleaning and paper products from drugstores or grocery stores – Unless there is a great sale that makes it cost effective. If you normally buy everything from one store, consider buying grocery items from grocery stores, and personal /household items from Marc’s/Target/Walmart . The extra trip will be worth the savings.