Tuesday’s Tips: Using Coupons at the Store

Welcome back for our last post about grocery savings! It has been so fun to share with you all how Erika from Just Peachy Photography and I use coupons to save money and feed our families as best we can!

As usual, please go over HERE to Erika’s site and read her first half about using coupons at the store. Click the link at the end of her post to come back here and read my half.

In two weeks, we will start-up a new set of posts. Be sure to check back and see the new topic! Thanks!!

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Recently, as most of you know, my family transitioned to organic foods. Unlike conventional foods, organic food coupons can be harder to come by. They are out there, but sometimes you have to do a bit more digging to find them. So, knowing the best times to use them is key in getting the biggest discount on what are typically the more expensive items to buy.

Here are my tips for applying coupons to organic purchases:

1. Shop the stores that offer store coupons to stack with manufacturer’s coupons.

Whole Foods and Meijer are where shop for most of our foods these days. If you are shopping at Whole Foods, check with your local store to make sure they allow both a store and a manufacturer coupon on each item. You don’t want to waste your time finding both types of coupons for a bunch of items only to find out your local store doesn’t accept coupon stacking. They have great deals when you can pair two coupons (one store and one mfr)to an item! They recently had a sale on Annie’s organic pizza for $8.99 each. That’s not really a great price for one frozen pizza, BUT they had a store coupon for $2.00 in their monthly booklet. I regularly grab a few booklets every time I’m there to hang onto coupons for later trips. I also noticed that Annie’s website had a $2.00 coupon through their Facebook page. Here’s what we bought for our family movie night and the breakdown of savings:

We bought 2 Annie’s frozen organic pizzas = $17.98 for 2

I used 2 of the store’s $2 off coupons = $4.00 off

Also used 2 of the Annie’s FB coupons = $4.00 off

I ended up paying $9.98 for 2 organic frozen pizzas, which is just under $5 each!

(I realize that those of you using coupons on conventional items probably don’t see $5 as a great price for one pizza, but that is a great price for a name brand 100% organic pizza! It’s also cheaper than a pizza being delivered to the house. Obviously, making it from scratch might have been cheapest in this situation, but sometimes we just want to buy the pre-made pizza and relax a little outside the kitchen!)

 2. Use savings from non-food items.

Every so often there is a special at Target or Meijer that offers a Catalina coupon for money

offer your next purchase if you fill or refill a prescription at their pharmacy. If you have a prescription to fill/refill, it would be a good investment to do so at that store, in order to take the Catalina and use it toward organic food purchases! (Of course, this would only be a good deal if your insurance covers that particular pharmacy.) You can get your prescription and save a little on those pricier items.

3.  Be patient! 🙂

If you are committed to buying organic foods, you will most likely find that sales on organic items don’t necessarily follow the 12 week sales cycle that regular foods do. So, it might be a little longer for really great pairings of sales and coupons. BUT, if you do your homework and shop the stores that allow coupon stacking, you can certainly still get really great deals on your favorite items.

And this spills over into non-food categories as well. Even eco-friendly cleaning products, paper products and baby items have good coupons and sales every so often. Again, you have to dig a little deeper to find those coupons sometimes, but if you plan it you will find it is definitely worth it! And when you find a product you love, be sure to write the manufacturer to let them know AND to ask for more coupons!