Save Money on Groceries - Match Store Sales with Coupons

So, you've created your budget. If you're like many people, your expenses may be higher or very close to your income leaving no breathing room for savings.

The goal is to reduce your spending on the "variable" categories such as groceries, household goods, utilities, etc.  Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to share some tips on reducing spending on groceries/household goods:

Match Store Sales with Coupons

Perhaps you've tried using coupons in the past, but quit because you ended up spending more with the coupon than without it on a store-brand item.  Or you felt like since you had a coupon you needed to use it.  So, you ended up spending more money than before you used coupons, since you purchased more items that you didn't really need (just because you had a coupon for it).

The key to saving money with coupons is to match the store sales with your coupons.  You want to hold your coupon until the store has reduced the price and then save even more money off that price with your coupon.  Sometimes you'll use your coupon the week it comes in the paper, and sometimes you'll hold it for months before you use it since store sales are cyclical.

How to Match Sales with Coupons?

Let Someone Else Do the Work for You - You're in luck! Each week, you can find sale lists for a wide variety of stores with the coupon matchups listed for you (both printable coupons and newspaper insert coupons).  You can even click the items you plan to purchase and add them to your printable list.

Use the Coupon Database - Take your local ad and figure out which sale items you plan to purchase.  Then, do a search in my coupon database for a coupon (either printable or insert coupon) that you can use with the sale item.