Planning Your Meals For The Week.

Shopping the sales is a no brainer. Doing this will save you TONS at the grocery store. Shopping the sales is simply this; every week when the new sale circular comes out, (the large newspaper looking thing with pictures and sale prices on it) you plan your grocery list around what is on sale. This means a couple of things, however…

When really get into couponing you have to let go of any BRAND LOYALTY you might have. We never got to have any brand loyalty because before we started couponing we were limited to only buying what was generic because at that point, it was cheaper. Welcome to the world of NEVER having to buy anything generic ever again! If you were like me, letting go of any brand loyalty was easy. For some people, this may prove a little more difficult. If you are in love with a particular brand of yogurt that you eat all the time it may be hard to try other things. Let me put it in perspective, however. If you are a family with a tight budget who NEEDS to coupon than letting go of brand loyalty might be tricky but it is well worth it in the end. If your brand of yogurt is relatively expensive then we have a problem. Why are you compromising your food budget for yogurt? Don’t break the bank! Shop the sales! If Chobani yogurt is on sale for 1.00$ this week and you have a .40cent off coupon that will double to .80cents off, that means yogurt cups for .20cents. I bet that .20cents is a lot cheaper than the yogurt cups you USED to get every week that are priced over .60cents a cup.

I am NOT saying that you need to ditch your brands. I am simply asking you to step outside the box. One week, your brand might go on sale and then you can stock up to your heart’s desire. Now if your brand is something that never produces any coupon, then we have a little problem. My philosophy is this simple. I am not going to break my budget, even a few dollars for MY brand of yogurt. Now this is just how I coupon and sometimes it means that I have to get a little daring and try other things. Usually the results are fantastic! I usually love new things that I try and guess what; I am buying them for next to nothing so it feels really good switching over.

Something that I really wanted to go over for you readers is how to utilize shopping the sales to plan your dinners for the week. This sounds simple but honestly it’s something that many people forget or do not know how to do. This is going to save you so much more time and money. No more running to the supermarket after work to buy what you need for that night’s dinner because you’ll get everything you need in only 1 trip! What I like to do is sit down with my sale circular and go over the match ups for that week to plan our dinners for the next week. If I see that Tyson chicken is going to be 50% off that week making it around 1.99LB then we are having chicken for that week! Usually you will see a trend. If pastas are on sale then usually sauce, garlic bread and Italian cheese are on sale as well. This means that many Italian dishes can be prepared. Next week at ShopRite, tortillas as well as taco seasoning and salsa are going to be on sale. That means that I will plan on having a quesadilla night, a nacho night and a taco night! I’m excited about that!