Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

How to Coupon for Healthy Foods

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Years ago, during the coupon craze, I bought my share of convenience foods that I could get for just pennies.  Thanks to couponing and buying the deals, I was able to save a great deal of money on groceries.  But over the years, I found that the money I saved wasn’t really saved after all.  Instead, the money just went somewhere else—to the doctor.

I had high cholesterol, high triglycerides, and after a while, serious stomach ailments that required me to go see a specialist.

I eventually switched to a Paleo diet, focusing primarily on eating fresh fruits, veggies, and some meat.  Since the change, my cholesterol is nearly 75 points lower, I no longer have high triglycerides, and my stomach is much improved.

I still try to keep the grocery budget trim, but it’s much harder to do so without using coupons.

Coupons for Healthy Foods?

Coupon for Healthy Foods
Couponing for Health

For years, I just assumed that there are no coupons for healthy foods, especially foods that aren’t processed, but that’s just not true.  If you know where to look, you CAN find coupons for healthy foods.

Where to Find Coupons for Healthy Foods

The best place to start is the manufacturer’s website.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Organic Valley—sign up for the mailing list, and you’ll receive coupons straight to your e-mail box.

Earth’s Best Organic—you’ll find coupons for baby items here.

Blue Diamond Almonds—sign up for their newsletter, and you’ll regularly receive offers

Whole Foods Coupons—you’ll find coupons for a wide array of products sold at Whole Foods

Other Ways to Get Coupons

There are other ways that I like to get coupons for healthy foods:

Facebook

Some companies will occasionally offer a coupon when you like their Facebook page.  This is my favorite time to like the page.  Also, companies sometimes post coupons on their Facebook page as their status update.

Write to the company

I admit, this sounds old fashioned, but I’ve had great success with writing to the companies individually.  I will find the e-mail address of the company on the product, and then I’ll send them an e-mail.  I usually let them know why I like their product and thank them for making it.  My kids have food intolerances, so if the company makes a product my kids can actually eat, I thank them for that.

I don’t specifically ask for coupons, but more than 50% of the time, they send me coupons.  Some companies are very generous and send several high value coupons.  If you create a stock letter for this type of e-mail, you can send out several e-mails, each to different companies, in a relatively short period of time.

Of course, just as when you’re using coupons for processed foods, the best way to stretch your savings is to stack the coupon with the item when it’s already on sale.

While getting coupons for healthy foods is a bit more difficult than couponing for processed foods, you still can use coupons to lower your grocery bill.

What are your favorite strategies for lowering your grocery bill when shopping primarily for healthy foods?

Extreme Couponing: Fad or Lifestyle

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Ever since TLC decided that it would make for good reality television to follow around a bunch of folks who use coupons and dub them “Extreme Couponers”, there’s been a ton of talk about the people on the show, and people like them.  People who spend hours each day clipping coupons and then checking them against store fliers all so they can create spreadsheets and action plans on how to best use the coupons in order to pay the least amount of money for whatever it is that they are buying.

So far, I’ve avoided talking about these people.  I figure it’s about time that I make my thoughts known.  What kind of personal finance site would Beating Broke be if we didn’t talk about one of the hottest topics in the personal finance world.  My immediate take upon watching an episode of the show was that the people on it are a bit OCD.  I like my money, and I’d rather not part with it if I don’t have to, but not so badly that I’m going to buy several hundred tubes of toothpaste.  Or several hundred of anything for that matter.  I also don’t buy the “I saved $xxx” argument.  If you hadn’t gone to the store in the first place, you would have saved every penny you spent.

Coupons can play a somewhat important role in your shopping.  But, it doesn’t have to be as overwhelming as all that.  My wife, for instance, is on a coupon train that Extreme Couponing: Getting ready for my big shopping trip!she joined through Swapmamas.  Every week or so, she gets a big envelope that’s bursting at the seam with coupons that the person who sent them to her just couldn’t use.  She’ll sort through them while we’re watching T.V. or lying in bed at the end of the day.  She carries the ones she keeps in a nice little accordion pocket organizer that she bought for that reason, then sends the rest off to the next person on the train.  When we go shopping, we try to make a list and she’ll take 10-15 minutes to flip through the coupons to see if we have any that we can use.  We don’t get results like the folks on that show, but it’s not out of the ordinary to save anywhere from 5% to 20% on any given trip.  On stuff we were going to buy anyways.

Extreme couponing has become a bit of a fad.  People are watching shows like the one on TLC and thinking they can do the same thing.  Some of them are going to less than honest means to achieve those goals and are stealing papers from dispensers just to get to the valuable coupons in the inserts.  When you have to steal to save your money, you really need to draw that line and get some help.  Done right, couponing can be something that is hardly intrusive at all, and that can save you some money.  Done right, it can become a bit of a lifestyle.

Some say they just don’t have the time to use coupons, but I think they have a somewhat distorted view of the time involved.  It doesn’t have to be time consuming, and the returns can be rewarding.  Give it a try.  Next thing you know, you’ll be buying two of those Sunday papers.

photo credit: bargainbri

Originally published on 8/15/2011

Couponing Doesn’t Need to be Extreme

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Every day, I hear people say that they don’t use coupons because they don’t have the time to go through the papers and mailers and clip the coupons. “It just takes too much time” they say. Those same people, will spend hours budgeting and finding ways to save themselves money, but they don’t see couponing as a viable use of their time and efforts. While coupons may not be as important to your financial health as a budget, they can be just as good as many of the other saving methods that you will employ.

With the popularity of extreme couponing, it’s no wonder that people feel that they need to spend hours each week pouring over newspaper inserts, clipping coupons, then sorting them all into categories and then making plans for where they’ll shop and what they’ll buy. In their mind, they see piles and piles of inserts, and closets full of extra supplies that they’ll need years to use up.

Box o' couponsCouponing doesn’t need to be extreme, though. If skipping your daily latte can be a good strategy for saving a few dollars a day, so can clipping a few coupons. Taking a few minutes each week to flip through the inserts in your paper and clipping the few coupons that you find for the things that you buy regularly can easily save you a few dollars a week. Signing up for manufacturer email newsletters can often result in an electronic coupon to print out once or twice a month. A few extra emails a month is a small price to pay to save a dollar or two.

Now, the thing to remember here is that you aren’t going to retire off of the money you’ll save. And, you certainly won’t be sending your kids to college with it either. But, saving money is saving money. A few dollars here, and a few dollars there all adds up in the grand scheme of things. Heck, maybe you clip coupons so that you can treat yourself once a week to that latte that you’re currently skipping.

Anything that can be done, has been done to an extreme. But, just because the extreme version of something is popular, doesn’t mean that it has to be the only way. Just like there are people who run extreme marathons of 100 miles or more, doesn’t mean that you can’t be a runner. Just because there are hyper-milers who squeeze every extra bit of MPG out of their cars, doesn’t mean that you can’t employ a few of the same methods to save a bit on gas. And, just because there are people who spend hours each week clipping, sorting, and analyzing coupons, doesn’t mean that you can’t spend a few minutes each Sunday to save a few bucks.

photo credit: sdc2027