Step 1: Obtaining and Registering Your Shoppers Card

The first step to savings is obtaining your grocery store savings card. Your Kroger(and Kroger family) card or your shopper's card is one of your most valuable cards. You can obtain your Kroger Card or any other grocery store card within minutes at the customer service desk of the store. DO NOT combine this task with a grocery shopping trip. Your grocery shopper's card enables you to get the sale prices on the advertised items as well as any other specially priced items.

Complete the following tasks:

1) Once you return home, access the internet. Go to kroger. Register your new Kroger card. Once registered, you will receive special promotions by mail ($5.00 off coupons and various other incentives). If your store does not have a shopper's card, sign up for publications on your store's website.

2) Next, register your Kroger card at PGesaver and shortcuts. Once registered at each of these sites, you can download e-coupons for the items you would like or normally purchase on to your Kroger card. E-coupons can be used with paper coupons even on the same items (the savings are growing). PGesaver is for Proctor and Gamble products and shortcuts has Kroger brand and national brand products. Revisit PGesavers monthly to add new e-coupons. Revisit shortcuts weekly to update. Shortcuts limits the amount of non redeemed coupons to 50.
Go to cellfire and register your Kroger card and download the savings. You will note with this site, you can register other savings on to your cell phone for various savings at establishments throughout Atlanta or wherever you live. I STRONGLY recommend downloading grocery coupons for Kroger onto the card. Use the cell phone savings for the other merchants listed on cellfire. Check my site weekly for new items for cellfire items

There are seasonal sites for Kroger. Click here for fall savings that can be downloaded to your Kroger card. I do not have an expiration date for this site.

For other stores (non-Kroger family), please obtain your savings card and register on the store website if available. If your store does not have a shopper's card, please register on the store website to obtain savings.

Next post, I will continue to talk about coupons:electronic and paper.

Before We Get Started: Helpful Tips

There are a few tips I offer new couponers:

1) Your first trip to the grocery store with coupons will only be a few items from the coupon list and many items from their regular shopping list. You are buying what you need and buying the sale items with coupons. As time progresses, your shopping trips will include more sale items with coupons as your needed items have been puchased on sale. ( I hope this makes sense). Your first trip is not likely going to be 90% savings. Do not get discouraged during this phase. Eventually, you will achieve this amount of savings.

2) You are not going to clip coupons until we need them. If you do not know how to file, you may want to become familiar with this task. You are going to need file folders!!!

3) Let's face it, you have been buying the same items for years. Using coupons and buying sale items will give you the opportunity to think "outside the box" and try new or different items. You will have items that you will not compromise on brand; however, you will try different brands on other items.

4) Invest in a printer that has refillable cartridges or a printer with inexpensive refill cartridges. There are alot of printable coupons available online.

5) Obtain another email account. You will need to register on various sites to receive coupon offers. You will receive hundreds of offers. Please do not use your personal email account.

6) If you do not have a separate freezer, you may want to begin the search for a energy efficient freezer. Try craigslist and garage or estate sales before you buy retail.

7) More tips to come :)

Commitment and Motivation

It is exciting to see the shoppers on TV and via the various websites and blogs saving money with coupons. The savings ignites frugal shoppers to begin couponing.

Before you begin to take on the coupon craze, there are a few important facts I would like to share. I unsuccessfully tried to shop with coupons for 15 years before finding true success. The reason I could not master it earlier was related to my level of commitment and motivation. When my 11 year old asked me if we were "poor", I found my primary motivating reason. Secondly, gas prices skyrocketed to $4/gallon in metro Atlanta. My fuel costs exceeded $100 per week. I am part of the working middle class whose budget is adversely affected by rising consumer prices. Though I did not consider myself to be "poor," I was not able to fill my pantry or refrigerator. It hurt my feelings for my child to assume we were poor.

I had no choice regarding commitment. I did not have family in the Atlanta area to help with groceries. I had reduced expenses in every aspect of my family budget. There were no Saturday shopping trips to the mall or movie night at the theatre. Significantly reducing expenditures on food was a great way to add money back to the budget.

When I analyzed my budget, my family ate at restaurants more than 5 times a week. Most of the meals cooked at home were convenience meals. I spent an average of $300 every 2 weeks on restaurant meals and convenience foods. This amount seems low; however, we were eating out at fast food type restaurants. It is cheaper to eat unhealthy than healthy.

In summary, my financial situation warranted an injection of cash as well as an overhaul of my diet. I was motivated and I had to commit. I had a few options but I chose grocery coupons.

Teenagers and Coupons

I tried a new approach to couponing. I decided to let my teenager EARN her allowance. Her responsibilities would include purging old inserts, making new file folders and retrieving inserts for my weekly savings. If she wanted extra money, she would clip the coupons based on my shopping list. Initially, my angel helped for free. I got better results when she worked for free. Once the allowance started, the quality went out the window. When I got to the register, my savings were a mere 48%. I was quite upset. Some of my coupons were not in the envelope. Her explanation was the coupon insert was not in the file box. I knew I purchased every Sunday paper as well as the weekly neighborhood papers!

I resumed my duties of maintaining my coupon files. There were several inserts in the wrong date as well as SmartSource inserts with Red Plum inserts. I would like for her to learn the skills as this will help while in college and the rest of her life. For now, she assists. My most recent shopping trip I was able to achieve my 65% savings. I am still in the recovery phase from my summer hiatus. I hope to be back at 80-90% savings. I developed a new tool to help me achieve these results. I will reveal the details later.

Glad to be Back!!

I tried other options to reach America but I realized as a busy mother of two teenagers, this is my best venue to reach consumers. What I do best is teach others how to effectively use grocery coupons.. I am going back to my roots of teaching others.

In the past 9 months, some things have changed with coupons; but, the principal skills remain the same. I still shop between two major grocery stores, Walgreen's and CVS. I will admit that I don't always make it to Walgreen's and CVS every week.

Since I last blogged, I moved to a different house. During the move over the summer months, I did not purchase groceries for 2.5 months. I never realized how much food I had stored. I certainly did not want to pack and unpack food. We lived the summer months eating my hoarded items; however, I continued to collect my coupons and file. I continue to follow my 7 steps to savings.

Types of Coupons

There are various type of coupons. Whenever I refer to published coupons, I am referring to Smartsource(SS), Redplum(RP) and Proctor and Gamble (P&G). Smartsource and Redplum are published weekly according to a schedule. Click here for the schedule. Proctor and Gamble is published monthly and is included with the weekend newspaper. General Mills(GM) and Target have inserts that appear in major Sunday newspapers. I consider coupons found in magazines as published too. I do not cut these coupons until I am preparing my shopping list.

Printable coupons are printed from the internet from various websites. Please look at the right margin of this blogsite and at the bottom: PPGazette and Coupons, Inc. These are the types of sites that offer internet printable coupons. Various food manufacturers have special coupon offers and make their coupons available on their websites.

Electronic coupons or e-coupons are available. They can be downloaded to your shoppers card or your I-phone. Cellfire, Shortcuts and PGesaver are the main e-coupons for Kroger stores and Kroger family stores. Click on the cellfire ad listed in the right margin to enroll. Enrollment can be processed on my website. Also, Kroger offers other sites for various seasonal e-coupons.

While grocery shopping, you will see blinking boxes by Smartsource. These coupon boxes are referred to as "blinkies." Collect these coupons while shopping. Sometimes the value of these coupons are better than published coupons. Tearpads are as stated. They are coupons on a pad that can be torn off individually. Peelies are coupons found on the product. They have to be "peeled" off to redeem. Also, there are coupons found on "specially marked" packages of the product. These coupons can be retrieved once the package is opened at home. Hangtags are coupons usually found are the neck of bottled products such as colas, wines, juices, etc.

These are the major coupon types I have encountered. I am sure as you become a coupon savvy shopper you began to notice all the sources of coupons. You will need to become familiar with these terms as they will appear on published shopping lists.