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Great offer on money saving books!

March 17, 2009 by

Are You Financially Pinched? Is Your Grocery Budget Starving?

Get your grocery spending under control with the Savin’ O The Green grocery savings e-book special, a set of 17 e-books to help you save at the grocery store and make your life easier! Along with six easy audio lessons, these e-books show you how to save money in the kitchen, save with or without using coupons, put together delicious and easy dinners and much more!

I thought I’d take this moment to let you know about a great offer from our friends at LivingOnADime.com and MoneySavingMom.com. Many of you are already familiar with their money saving, get-out-of-debt, frugal living and homemaking tips.

They have just contacted me to let me know that with the rise in the price of groceries, they have decided to team up to offer you their two grocery savings e-courses along with a huge pile of bonus items. Even better, they are offering this Savin’ O The Green 17 e-book package to our readers for $17, a substantial discount off of the regular price of $75 for these e-books.

The e-books that are included in this offer are:

*Supermarket Savings 101 eCourse with audio downloads
*Grocery Shopping On A Budget eCourse
*Money Saving Meats e-book
*Saving On Cleaning Supplies e-book
*Eating Healthy On A Budget e-booklet
*Is Eating Out Eating You Up? e-book
*224 Meals In A Hurry e-book
*Grocery Savings e-book
*Menus That Make Cents e-book
*Plan Ahead Leftovers e-book
*Quick Dinners e-book
*Menu Planning Made Easy
*Simply Centsible Breakfasts
*Simply Centsible Suppers
*Kids Recipes
*Menus On A Dime
*470 Crockpot Recipes

For more information on this exciting offer, click here. The dsicounted price is only valid through 3/23/09 at midnight.

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Thrifty Thursday: Hot grocery deals this week

January 15, 2009 by

Since I started my $40 weekly grocery budget, I have been VERY conscientious about looking at the ads each week. The past couple of weeks have been a bit disappointing, but this week, is an exciting week. Here are a few of the highlights.

Lots of 10/$10 items including veggies (you don’t have to buy 10 items to get them for $1 each….they will ring up at $1 individually) – I love 10/$10 sales because I usually have some coupons that will match up giving me FREE stuff!


The following fresh fruits and veggies are 10/$10: Ripe Jumbo Hass Avocados, Jumbo Mangos, Jumbo Texas Grapefruit, Organic Mini Peeled Carrots, Broccoli Crowns, and Seedless Cucumbers

These items are also 10/$10 with great coupon match-ups!

Green Giant Frozen Veggies – FREE with the coupons below:
$1/2 Green Giant coupon from Cellfire.com
.50/1 Green Giant printable coupon here

Rice a Roni – FREE if you got the .50/1 printable on Sunday and your stores double, .75/each with the $1/4 coupon from the 1/4 inserts

Act II popcorn – .60/each with coupon from 12-14 inserts
.40/1 coupon from 12-14 SS insert (expires 1/31/09)

Hamburger Helper – .67/each with $1/3 printable coupon here
(Don’t forget to submit your Box Tops to support your child’s school!)

Dial Bar soap, 3 pk – FREE (YMMV)
.35/1 Dial multibar pack from 1/4 SS insert – this says “Do not double or triple” but YMMV because my stores still triple those coupons

Softsoap – FREE
.35/1 Softsoap from 1/4 SS insert

Other 10/$10 items:
*Kroger Family Size bread
*Kroger frozen vegetables
*Nabisco Snak-Saks
*Hagen Daz 4 oz ice cream cups
*Kroger dips or sour cream
*Kroger microwave pizza
*Aunt Jemima breakfast items or Banquet Brown ‘n Serve sausage
*Kroger fruit snacks
*Quaker Quakes rice cakes
*Kroger pretzels
*Kraft Easy Mac cup
*Bar S jumbo franks or bologna
*Hormel Little Sizzlers
*Armour Lunch Makers
*Fast Fixin chicken – with every 10 UPCS, you get a free product coupon!

Diaper deal – Huggies diapers/Pull Ups are $9.99/each

$2/1 loadable Pull Ups e-coupon from Shortcuts.com
$2/1 printable Pulls ups coupon from Huggies.com

Total cost for one package of Pull Ups after coupons = $5.99
Submit for $.75 Caregivers rebate = $5.24/package after rebate

$1.50/1 Huggies diapers coupon from Shortcuts.com
$3/2 loadable coupon from Cellfire.com
$1.50/1 Huggies diapers coupon from 1/11 inserts

Buy 2 packages, spend $12.48 ($6.24/package)
Submit for $.75 Caregivers rebate = $5.49/package

Get a free coupon book to save on future grocery purchases by clicking on the link below:

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My New Years "Challenges": $40 a week grocery budget and more savings!

January 2, 2009 by

I thought I’d share my personal New Years “challenges” (I don’t want to use “resolution”) with you all to explain some of the changes on my blog. Feel free to participate, too, if you’d like!

My weekly posts will basically stay the same, but beginning on Sunday, I will be making these two weekly changes:

*Mondays will change from “More Savings Monday” to “Menu Planning Monday”

*Saturday will still be “Savings Saturday” but I will also post my total savings for that week

Here are my challenges for the year:

*$40 a week grocery budget (this is for a family of four) – This will include all of my groceries. I do an overall monthly budget, but rather than allotting a certain amount for the month, I am going to try to stay within the $40/week to make it easier for everyone to follow. I do my grocery shopping on Saturday, so the details from this will be posted in “Savings Saturday” but my menu for the week will be posted on Mondays.

At this point, my grocery budget does not include paper products. I don’t really budget for these things because I basically have a six month to year supply of most of these products thanks to CVS/Walgreens. Any additional paper products I do buy will most likely be covered by ECBs or RRs. It also does not include health & beauty products (I have at least a year supply of most of these and buy most of the rest using ECBs or RRs) and does not include our expenses for eating out. This comes out of a separate category in our budget.

The $40/week will be based on my out of pocket expenses. If I use gift cards, coupons, RR, or ECBs, those will not count toward the $40 weekly budget.

**I wanted to add that I see this as a possibility for me because I have a stockpile of items already to work with. If you don’t have a stockpile, it may cost you a little bit more to get started, but I will be posting items that you should stock up on while they are super cheap as they come along. Also, two of the major grocery stores around me triple coupons up to .39 and double coupons up to .50. We also don’t have any food allergies or dietary restrictions that we have to accommodate and I don’t have any babies eating baby food or formula right now.

*Meeting the following savings goals without touching our monthly paychecks

Each month, we save for some things such as auto maintenance/registration; property insurance/taxes/HOA fees (we do our own escrow after a bad experience with our escrow company a few years back); planned vacations; clothing, and long term emergency planning. If you don’t have an ING account, this is a great place to keep all of your “extra” savings accounts because you can create sub accounts and track everyone in one place.

The following savings accounts will not be funded through our monthly paychecks. I will use the “extra” things I do to fund these accounts. You can follow my savings progress through the tickers on the right side bar of the blog.

*Gift savings – This will include Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, and other gifts that we need to pay for throughout the year.

*Baby emergency fund – If you follow Dave Ramsey, you know that this is. Basically it’s $1000 that you keep on hand to cover any emergencies

*Rolling entertainment fund – We have a monthly entertainment budget, but this will cover any spur of the moment “extras” like a weekend getaway or an unplanned family excursion. It’s “rolling” because if we use the money, I’d like to rebuild it 🙂

Here are the ways that I plan to fund these savings accounts:

*Mystery shopping

*Payment from various survey companies – Mysurvey.com and Pinecone Research are my two favorites right now

*Checks from rebates (I earned about $800 last year from rebates and many of the rebates I submitted were for products I bought for “free” using ECBs or RRs)

*Garage sales – we have two community garage sales each year

*Ebay sales – every six months or so, we do a clean out of our house and items that are not being donated or sold at our garage sale get listed on Ebay

*Payment from articles that I write for Associated Content

*Money from our cash back rewards credit cards – this works well for us because we pay these cards off in full every month….I don’t recommend this route if you’re not in a position to do that

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TARGET freebies: ham, veggies, batteries, and cheap biscuits!

November 30, 2008 by

If you have a KMart near you, then you’re probably living it up doing the doubles deals. I don’t have a KMart anywhere near me, so I have to find other things to get excited about.

Here are a few deals at Target:

*FREE HAM – the Archer Farms “ham steak” (which is basically a thick piece of ham) is all priced at less than $2 at my store. Use the $2 off Archer Farm printable coupon from Target.com to get your ham for free! (I posted a picture at the top of the page)

*Free broccoli – the Green Giant broccoli is .50. Use the printable $1 off broccoli coupon and it’s free!

*Free batteries – Rayovac batteries are in the “one spot.” There is a printable coupon for $1 off making them free!
http://www.rayovac.com/alkaline/pdf/AlkalineHAB_Online_Rebate.pdf

*Cheap celery – the Green Giant celery is .50.

*Cheap biscuits – The Pillsbury layered biscuits are $1.07 at my store (YMMV). Use the $1/2 Pillsbury baked goods printable from Target.com and the .75/3 blinkie found in grocery stores (I found mine at Kroger). Buy 6 and pay $1.92 (that’s .32/can). There are 6 biscuits in each can.

*Starbucks Truffles – the small bags are $1.29 at Target. There are $1/1 blinkies at CVS making them .29/each!

*Pop Tarts – They are $1.78/box at my store (YMMV). Use the $1/2 Target printable and the $1/2 manufacturer’s coupon making them .78/box.

*Hefty Zoo pals are $2.19 at Target (again YMMV). There is a printable $1 coupon. Buy 7 and then use the $3/15 Target partyware coupon. Spend $5.33 OOP.

Here is the link to the manufacturer’s coupon:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/NGKids/SiteAssets/pdf/zoo-pals-coupon.pdf

Here is the link to the Target $3/15 partyware coupon:
http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/page.jsp?title=birthday_coupon_party&AFID=Performics_**Slick%20Deals**&LNM=Primary

*Glade holiday candles:
Buy four Glade holiday candles in the following scents and get a $5 gift card: Apple Cinnamon, Gingerbread or Glistening Snow scents.

The participating items are priced at $2.50/each, and if you scan them, it will say “buy 4, get a $5 gift card” on the scanner. The deal is good through 12/15.The following items are reported to work for this deal:

4 oz jar candles ($2.50)
Scented oil candle holders ($2.50) – only available in apple cinnamon
Scented oil candle refills 3-pack ($2.50)
Plugins scented oil refill, with free warmer in pack ($2.50)
Wisp flameless candles ($9.49 reg, $5.99 this week – there are $5 off peelies at my stores)
InStyle magazine ($3.59-$3.99)

There are printable coupons here: http://www.rightathome.com/offers/200811-glade/

Don’t forget the Fusion razors this week. They are $7.99/each and you get a $5 gift card when you buy 2. Buy 2 using your $4 off Fusion coupons from this week’s inserts (and hopefully you have a $5 gift card from another deal like the diapers or Glade candles). Spend $7.98 if you don’t have a $5 gift card (so it’s like you get one for free) or $2.98 if you do have a gift card.

If you have the $7 or $5 Iams coupons, you can also get a decent deal on dog food. It is on sale for $17.99 this week. Buy 2 and use a $7 and $5 coupon (along with a $5 gift card if you have one). Spend $18.98 for two bags of dog food (almost like getting one free!)

**Also keep your eyes open for TMF peelies on the Hillshire Farms lunch meat (the one in the Gladware container)
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Tip of the Day Tuesday: Stock up in season

November 18, 2008 by

Buying “in season” doesn’t just apply to fruits and vegetables. When you have been couponing for awhile, you start to see trends in the sale items. If you match your coupons with the sale items, you can often get things pretty cheap

This time of year is the perfect time to stock up on:
*broth (chicken/beef) – you can usually brand name for .30-.40/can
*cream soups (cream of chicken, cream of mushroom, etc.) – you can usually get Campbells for .50-.60/can
*baking items (chocolate chips, flour, sugar, etc.) – if you have a Kroger store, take advantage of the Mega Sale going on right now!
*soup in general (you can get cans of Progresso or Campbells ready to serve for .50-$1 and sometimes free depending on your coupons)
*canned vegetables (you can get them anywhere from .39-.50/can right now)
*cold medicines

If you want to start stocking up, at Walgreens this week, you can get ButterBall chicken broth for .39/can. Campbell’s cream soups are 5/$4. Don’t forget the Mega Sale at Kroger for baking items!

Some people stockpile so that they have an emergency reserve of goods for times of need (unemployment, natural disaster, etc.). I have used mine for both situations. Having a stockpile also helps you to save money on groceries. When I see that there is going to be a good sale on something and there are coupons to match, I usually get a large number of coupons (10-20) and stock up. Then, I don’t ever HAVE to pay full price for these items. I am able to wait until there’s another good sale and stock up again. It’s also nice because I usually don’t have to worry about making last minute trips to the grocery store.

If you’re still having doubts about stockpiling, check out this article on the Five Myths of Stockpiling:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/854863/five_myths_about_stockpiling.html?cat=7

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