Question About Saving Money

This just came through on the comment to the post about Saving Money on Groceries post and here is the question from sortin'itallout (Grammy's Recipes You have a very nice site by the way):

"I am curious about the coupons--we don't buy a newspaper, so would it make sense to buy a paper just for the coupons? Or is the cost of the paper more than you can save with coupons?"

I would buy at least the Sunday paper each week for all the ads, there is enough ads in most newspapers that can actually pay for your newspaper in addition to saving extra money on your food bill. Most ads in papers are for newer products, old faithful products, and sometimes products that do not sell well. You have to wade through them and find what you will really use and what you need.

If you do not want to go the newspaper route (I find it is one of the more easier ways to get my coupons but not everyone does), there are also websites that you can print free coupons and you can surf those after making your weekly grocery list and check to see if there is a coupon for anything you have on your list and print it out.

Sometimes, there are coupon swapping groups (yes they still exist haha, but they are few and far between) or get some friends together and start one; that way you all benefit. You can possibly find coupon swapping groups within Mom's groups, and places like that online will guide you to a local one in the area, if it exists.

Check the magazines you read. A lot of the recipe, cooking, home and garden magazines are huge with coupons on popular products.

Check your grocery store receipt, sometimes there are coupons on the back and some stores print out coupons at the register. Save these for later and make sure you use them before the expiration date.

Check product websites. Some of the more popular products have huge websites and you can surf them to find coupons, they are large enough to give out massive amounts of coupons because that indicates dollars in their pockets. Here are a couple websites that you can get coupons from:
1. Box Tops for Education These are boxtops that come off of cereal boxes and many more other products from General Mills, they are glad to give away coupons because when you clip these little boxtops and send them to a school that accepts them, they get money but they also give back by giving money to schools when they turn it in. Win Win situation for all. I clip many many boxtops for my daughter's school.
2. Betty Crocker Coupon Page
3. Pillsbury Coupon and Promotion Page
These are just a few of the sites you can get coupons from. All 3 of these individual sites come from General Mills. You can also look up Post, Kellogg's, and whatever else site you can find. If you have the surfing time, you can save a bundle of money on looking on sites of products you use the most.

I hope this was helpful. Let me know what else I can do for you! Thanks for your question.