How do you get started?

Step One: Write down the top 10 things your family buys. E.g. Milk, Cereal, etc.

Step Two: Go to your top 2 or 3 grocery stores (or Rite Aid, Walgreens, etc.) and price out those. This gives you a sense of what things normally costs; that way when you see something on sale you know if it’s a good deal or not. Keep this price list to remind you.

Step Three: Buy the Sunday paper (yes, you do have to spend a little money but trust me, it pays off if you keep up with it.) At least for Central Oregon there are often sales reps for the Bend Bulletin in the grocery stores. They are usually willing to split their commission with you. What does that mean? Great deal for you! You can get the paper delivered to your door for $1.50/wk. For example, I bought a paper from a guy selling it at Albertsons. It cost me $33 to purchase for 3 months. Expense? Yes. But, he gave me $15 back in Albertsons gift cards. I was buying the paper every Sunday and every Tuesday as it was so this was already .50 cheaper AND it is now delivered to my door. Score.

Step Four: Here’s where it get’s a little tricky and tedious. Scour the ads for all the coupons and clip every coupon you think you MIGHT use. SAVE all the rest of the coupons even if you don’t think you’ll use them…(I can explain why later).  These are available in the P&G, Red Plum, Smart Source, etc. inserts.

Step Five: Purchase the mid-week paper that offers your local grocery store ads (for Bend this is the Tuesday paper). Repeat everything from Step 3. Don’t forget to clip the double manufacturers coupons too. There usually aren’t too many coupons in this paper but it gives you an idea of all the “specials” the grocery stores have currently. Not sure about any other location but the Bend Bulletin will occasionally have a $10 off $50 or more at Safeway coupon hidden in this paper (not in the ad section like everything else)--even if it appears only once a month you’ve already recouped the loss for the cost of the paper.

Step Six: Repeat step 4 and step 5 EVERY WEEK. With kiddos it can be tricky to find the time to do this. What we do is purchase a doughnut with the Sunday paper (I buy the Oregonian as well) and when the weather is nice sit on the back deck and let the kdis eat doughnuts and play outside. This gives me plenty of time to even enjoy a cup of coffee while I’m doing it. This has actually become a Sunday morning ritual.

Step Seven: Check out www.coupons.com or www.afullcup.com

These sites provide printable coupons accepted at the grocery stores. Print out any you think you will need and remember to hit the refresh or back button to print them 2x (the max any one computer can print).

Step Eight: Download the coupon printer offered via any of those sites…necessary to print coupons from online.

Step Nine: SAVE, SAVE SAVE--It’s important to be patient while building your coupon stockpile. You might not have a lot of the combinations right away.

Step Ten: Match coupons with sales and win! Your goal is build a stockpile of groceries you can pull from...this stockpile should really cost you next to nothing. For e.g. we have about 10 boxes of cereal in our pantry right now. I don't pay more than .50 a box and since expiriation dates are usually at least 6 months I stock up whenever I see a deal that's less than .50.