Use grocery coupons and save a bundle on your shopping bill. Here are some online coupon resources to help you save on groceries.
How Do You Save On Groceries?
I’m always amazed (and a little jealous) when I read about those clever grocery shoppers who manage to get $200 worth of goods for $3.24. Then my mind conjures up images of frazzled individuals racing through the aisles of a grocery store pushing a cart full of canned goods and convenience foods ahead of them while towing a second cart full of carefully clipped scraps of paper behind them, and paying with 324 pennies at the checkout.
I’m sure this is not really the way these smart shoppers really navigate the aisles. If you’d like to do more to join their ranks, maybe these articles on the topic of frugal grocery shopping can be of help:
- Save Money On Groceries With These Tips
- Grocery Shopping Tips To Pad Your Pocket, Guaranteed!
- Coupon Tips and Tricks To That Can Cut Your Grocery Bill By 80%
From these posts, a common money saving tip I’ve come across is to make use of coupons. I clip coupons when I think of it, which isn’t often, and I use them even less often (I forget I have them — I call it couponesia). See, I don’t buy newspapers, which is where I’ve always thought coupons come from. I tend to read my news online to save paper and money. But I’ve discovered that I can get grocery coupons online, too! Here are just a few sites that offer the printable kind:
GroceryCoupons.com
Where To Get Printable Online Grocery Coupons
1. Couponmom.com
One of the most popular coupon resources around, Couponmom offers a free membership, and strives to be the one stop shop for all your coupon needs. They maintain a grocery coupon database, forum, blog, free ebooks, coupon and deal alerts you can sign up for and of course, printable grocery coupons and free samples. I like the wealth of information here and helpful tools, but a lot of their offerings just point to (and lead to) other web sites and software that provide you the actual coupons. Many of these resources will require you to register.
2. GroceryCoupons.com
Here’s an online coupon clipping and delivery service — a custom coupon service, if you will. They charge a $9.95 annual membership and also charge you a 10% processing fee plus 75 cents for shipping. However, they’ll reimburse your additional processing and shipping costs by sending you extra coupons. Still, bear in mind that you’re paying for the coupons via those additional fees since the extra coupons that come to you may not exactly be what you’re looking for. You’re really paying for the convenience of having someone else find, clip and send you the coupons you need.
3. SmartSource
SmartSource offers coupons on lots of name brand products with no registration required. However, printing the coupons requires the installation of software which some anti-spyware programs may flag. I also found that the vast majority of the available coupons were for products that I would never buy, though there were a few good ones.
4. Coupons.com
Coupons.com also features coupons for many products with no registration required. Much like SmartSource, Coupons.com requires the installation of software for you to be able to print the coupons; however, there is a claim on the installation page stating that the software is not adware or spyware, and that it will not collect any personal information about the user.
5. Eversave
Eversave requires registration. When I checked it out, I registered, and then the site forced me to go through no fewer than eight pages of affiliate offers before dumping me at the SmartSource coupon site. Depending on your requirements, you may find some of the offers valuable (e.g. a good number of items were baby-related), but I didn’t find anything of particular interest to me. If you don’t mind jumping through a few hoops, they may be worth checking out.
6. TheCouponClippers
TheCouponClippers has the same premise as GroceryCoupons.com, where you buy just the coupons you can use and they are mailed to your home via the good ol’ USPS. For instance, a coupon for $1.00 off a purchase of two boxes of General Mills costs $0.12. You can also buy more than one of any given coupon, so if there’s a specific product that you use a lot of, you can still save, even if you buy in multiples. No scissors needed.
There are other sites out there that do a whole lot of work for you. TheGroceryGame, for instance, compiles information about coupons and your local stores’ sales, both advertised and unadvertised, to help you find the best possible deals on groceries — for a fee. A four-week trial costs $1. After the trial period, the price increases to $10 for eight weeks for data collected for a single store. Additional stores can be added for $5 for eight weeks. The site claims that the average member saves 67% on their weekly shopping. The downside is that not all areas get great coverage (the only store that is listed in my area, for example, is Rite Aid), and you still have to clip your own coupons.
After checking around, I’ve realized that grocery coupons are so easy to find online that I really have no excuse for not joining those supermarket savvies who could feed their entire extended family for a week for what I spend on a spaghetti dinner for two. Except for the couponesia, that is.
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I noticed you mentioned the grocery game but did you know that there is couponing site Afullcup.com that gives you the same sales paper to coupon matchup for free. plus it is a great community of women that have helped me personnally go from just saving a few dollars to saving 50 or 60 dollars on every grocery trip.
There’s a guy in our area who has a website set up where he goes through the sale items at a particular grocery store and then finds coupons for them, so the savings are combined. The average price for about two weeks’ worth of groceries falls from about $150 to about $30. We watched a webcast where he went through a documented how to do everything, because he didn’t want people to spend a lot of time and money on it. I think it’s a great way to save money and free up some cash for other parts of the budget, but I think people stay away from it because they don’t want to be perceived as crazily frugal penny pinchers, like you talked about.
Getting coupons online is a pretty good idea, I didn’t know they had websites with grocery coupons. I am going to check this out. Thanks. Maybe now the grocery store trip will be cheaper for me =D.
My printer has been getting a lot of action. My wife has been showing me the receipts to prove it works. I’ll say that it takes a lot of motivation. She has the motivation. Last trip: items costed $120.00…she paid $50.00. You have to be diligent, no denying that.
It’s surprising how much you can save using coupons you find online, or even in the mail.
I’ve noticed lots more companies promoting offers with coupons etc lately. People still need certain products and services, regardless of the economy, and sometimes a special offer can help give them the ‘nudge’ they need to buy.
Chris
Outstanding blog on a subject very much on the dinner table of every American~!
I have always secretly admired those folks whose personal discipline allowed them to save money through this methodology.
It’s oh, so logical — yet such an obstacle to overcome if you are not an organizer of things, much less your own life.
Frank
I eat kosher food only so kosher food is very expensive im shocked at the prices and i think coupon mom and the other sites need to add kosher coupons to their sites … im very surprised that coupon mom didnt write me back with the way the econmy is people are losing their homes i come across every time to pick up the newspapers for coupons cuz in canada u can rarely get good coupons online and in the us i can get alot of coupons .. i just bought boxes of fruit roll ups for $1.00 us which saves me a good 10 bucks because the kind i buy sells for 3.49 in montreal i think the world needs more coupon resources … I love coupons…
Don’t forget about getting grocery coupons directly from the food companies. All most all food companies have websites that offer coupons and recipes. Using coupons is a great way to save money.
I’m really into electronic coupons. They are so much easier than the printed ones. You don’t need to worry if you forget your shopper’s card at home, just use your phone number to get your savings.
An excellent blog! Great tips for saving money on food items.
I also keep kosher and although I learned a lot from the many websites and blogs about how to really use coupons (I call it “super couponing”), I was frustrated that so many of the bargains promoted didn’t help me at all because they were for non-kosher food. So…I started my own blog focusing on kosher products. Of course it’s not just food bargains that I post about–if you’re saving 75-90% on health and beauty items, pet food, and other non-food items, it frees up *a lot* of money to use on kosher meat and cheese which, as those of us who keep kosher know, *never* goes on sale or has coupons.
You can check it out at Kosher Coupon Mom.
I just started it a little over a month ago and I’ve been posting more and more and hope to make this another great resource for saving money . I’ll also be posting recipes that use the ingredients I’ve gotten at bargain prices, use leftover Shabbos chicken for a regular Tuesday night meal, that sort of thing.
I hope people check it out (even if you don’t keep kosher, the information is helpful to anyone), and leave nice comments (please e-mail me privately the not-no-nice comments :D).
I am amazed to learn that people are getting $200 worth of groceries for just over $3. Still wondering if they can do it over and over again or is once a year opportunity or can they save that much amount of money over and over again, using grocery coupons to print.
In this poor economy, I think most people can use grocery coupons to save money on groceries. It really is amazing how much you can save if you put a little effort into research.
Thank you for this post! Since I don’t have a newspaper any more, it is great to see posts like this where I can find printable coupons. This helps many people who no longer get the newspaper to cut out coupons, but still value the savings that a coupon can bring. Be consistent about using coupons and you’ll save more than you might think on a yearly basis.
I am of the opinion that coupons should be used as often as possible. Heck, the money looks better in my pocket than it does in the store’s bank account. If you want a free book with over 100 sites that list printable coupons, ebates, rebates, samples, discounts, coupons and more, go visit a coupon site like couponsbythemillions.com.
I don’t know if that’ll help you remember to take your coupons with you but at least you’ll have this as a resource from which to get your coupons.
Best of luck and I hope you save a bundle.