My Penny Pinchin' Plan

When I began my journey as a Penny Pincher, there was only dial-up internet and email was mostly for businesses. There was no shopping online, there was no Google and digital coupons did not exist. I scoured Weekly grocery store flyers(paper) and junk mail for coupons. I joined a "coupon club" whose address I found in a library book on "savvy shopping"which sent me paper coupons in the mail. I've been at this a long time. It is a streamlined process now, thanks to the internet. But I have a process, with help from the internet, which might help you, at least those of you just starting out to be able to spot the best deals, save the most money and time and feed your family(or you and your spouse or just you) healthy delicious meals every week.

There are 3 major steps to take weekly and four other activities(done as needed, not every week)that should help you save more money and time.

Make a Weekly Meal Plan This needn't be fancy but does need to be full of nutritious foods. I have found that making a meal plan has helped me to be organized in my grocery shopping, thinking ahead to make sure my family had good meals and knowing what I was shopping for when I arrived at the store. I am easily distracted by displays, new items and tasting tables(like in Costco-I'm so glad they are back!) and having a list of items needed based on my meal plan helps me not to impulse

buy.

Visit Your Favorite Grocery Store's Website is the next step I take. I go once weekly on Wednesday(the day the new sales start for the week) and go straight to the Weekly Ad.

It is here I determine main dish, sides and veggies for the normally 3 meals I cook weekly. My family always ate leftovers, though yours may not. Now that our children are grown and flown, leftovers are hard but I have learned to scale down my husband's meat dishes( I've been a vegan for 4 years)to last for 2 meals, not 8 meals as before.

If your family doesn' t care for leftovers, you will cook more or either get more creative (that chicken you roasted Monday can make a nice chicken casserole for Tuesday).

You May Also Like to Swap Out These Two Steps so that checking out the Weekly Ad

and basing your main dishes on sale items is in place before you think about what to serve that week. Do what works best for you.

Browse Apps That Give You Rewards or Cash Back is an added activity that can give you cash back or rewards like gift cards to restaurants and retailers. I use Fetch and

Ibotta. I have tried many others, but these two are simple and have rewards that I like.

They pay well, too. All in all, I usually average around $200 a year in earnings from both together. If you are extremely motivated to buy the products featured each week or month, you might average more. One of the extra benefits to using these apps, I think is

that if you buy products that are both On Sale at your grocery store and Rewarded on one of these apps, it is its own bonus: you pay less than retail plus obtain a reward.

Those are the Big Three Steps now for additional steps to use as needed.

Buy a Big Box Store membership. They may seem a bit pricey, but I have found from personal experience, they are only if you don't use them in a planned way. My Costco membership years ago did make our "Friday Pizza Night" as a family economical and kept us supplied with grapes and blueberries(our children's favorite fruit) at a discount, as well as providing Organic Hamburger meat for all my spaghetti, chili mac and burger meals at a great savings. I didn't have the time to truly compare prices with other stores and often would just get items at the grocery store (Tylenol, Cold Meds, Toothpaste, Shampoo, Lotion)because it was more convenient. I would have saved a lot more had I realized how much I could save in both time and money by shopping for more items there. Sometimes life just got hectic and when it did, I preferred not to sacrifice my sanity for a few dollars. That being said, spending $65 is well worth it for a membership that will pay for itself, especially since it will cut down on the number of times you will shop for an item, thereby saving you time and extra shopping trips.

Reinvent Your Leftovers even if your family doesn't like leftovers. Try turning your roast beef dinner into "hot roast beef sandwiches with cheese" or "shepherd's pie",

chicken tenders into "chicken cobb salad" or leftover taco meat into "taco casserole".

Or, you can always....Freeze the Leftovers. They can make an appearance as is or in another form later on. I find it is nice to have frozen cooked meat ready to pop into the microwave and into a casserole, stir fry or sandwich when I need a quick low prep meal.

Take a Night Off

We always get takeout on Friday night. When I worked, it was a welcome respite to have one night the meal was prepared for me. With the children at home, this night was always Pizza Night. Now when they visit, we still have Friday night Pizza Night.

Often, though now the pizza lasts so long with just us, we don't want it again the next Friday, after eating it for 3-4 days so we then get Chinese(Pei Wei), Mexican(Local or Chuy's) or Sub Sandwiches (Publix, Jimmy John's,Jason's Deli, Jersey Mike's).We only get the other non-pizza food if we can find a deal that is less than or equal to our regular Domino's order. We have a loyalty card with Domino's, which gets us a free pizza after a certain number of orders and I often use my Fetch points to get a $50 Domino's card.