To Coupon or Not to Coupon...

I was seated beside a friend's pool with a bunch of other moms watching our kids splash and swim when a mom whipped out her scissors and stack of coupons and began clipping. After I got over my initial shame that I wasn't doing something equally industrious, I realized the moms were talking about coupons. I joined in and asked some questions and gave my two cents. What did I discover? Everyone has a slightly different opinion about coupons. Some people never bother with them. Some don't go to the store without them. And some plan their shopping around them.

I am tackling this subject not as an expert but as someone who has tried all of these ways and found what works for me. With coupons, there is not right or wrong (although there may be better or worse). You have to weigh your time, your money and your organizational skills to decide what is the best way for you to use (or not use) coupons. The following are a few methods I know of with the pros and cons attached.

1. Go coupon or go home. I have friends who have cut their grocery bill way down by using http://www.thegrocerygame.com/. They build their grocery list around a combination of store sale ads and recent coupons that you find in the local newspaper. There is a small fee to use the program, but I have been told it is worth it. I am going to do this for a month or two and report back about my personal experience.

2. Use coupons as a grocery shopping diet supplement. This is a method of combining ads and coupons also, but the center of the process is meal planning and knowledge of what is already in your pantry and freezer. Here's how it works. You clip coupons every week and organize them by type of product (dairy, paper, pets, etc.) When you get your ads in the mail on Tuesday for grocery sales beginning on Wednesday, sit down with a pen, paper, the ads and your coupon organizer. Check the front of the weekly ad to find the best deals on staple products such as meats, milk and produce. Start building a weekly menu around these items. You should have a general idea of what you have in your pantry and freezer. If you don't, go look before you start the process. Write it down if you don't have a good memory. Plan your meals first, keeping in mind what is on sale and what you already have on hand. Start making your grocery list based on what you will need for your meals. Then, go through your coupons to see what matches up. Pull all coupons that match your meal plan, even if you usually buy store brands. Sometimes you will still get a better deal with the coupon. Beyond the meals, make a list of staples you are running low on. Pull any coupons for these items. Put the coupons you plan to use in a separate envelope or pocket in your coupon organizer, but take your organizer with you. Sometimes the store will have an unadvertised special. It is not a bad idea to take a calculator with you. When you go to the store, stick as closely to your list as possible. If you saw a coupon for something you have wanted to try that is not part of your meal plan, add it to your list and consider it once you see the price. If it is not going to blow your budget, go for it. It would be better to try it when you have a coupon than later when you don't.

3. Clip and Carry. If the former two methods seem like too much work, at least do this. Clip and organize them. Keep your organizer either in your purse or car. When you are going into a store, take it with you. Who knows, you might get lucky and save a buck or two.

When I have had the best success with my grocery bill, I have used method two. I am going to try method one and get back with you. During times in my life when I have been in survival mode, I have resorted to method three. I am sure there are many variations you can come up with.

Here are a few tips I have learned about coupons:

1. If you are using them, shop where they double coupons.
2. Look at all sizes of a product to see how you will get the best deal. If you have a 55 cent coupon that will be doubled to $1.10, and the smallest size of the item that is allowed on the coupon costs $1.50, you bought it for 40 cents and saved something like 75% . If you need the larger size, however it may be worth it to go for that instead.
3. Beware of buying just because of a coupon. If it is really something you can use and it is in your budget, do it. Otherwise you may find yourself with a load of groceries and nothing to fix for supper. I speak from experience on this one.
4. Don't overload your larder. It's great to stock up when you find a steal, but keep in mind how much room you have.
5. If you do find a steal and don't have room, consider donating some of your excess to a food pantry. Hey, you only paid 20 cents for that box of cereal and you don't eat that kind. Someone else might be extremely grateful for it.
6. Clip weekly. It doesn't take much time if you stay on top of it, but if you don't, it will seem like too large a task to tackle.
7. Enlist the kids. If your kids can accurately wield scissors, they can help, and you will be teaching them some lessons in frugality along the way.

Please add more tips in the comments if you have them. I'm always willing to learn more. By the way, I haven't even talked about coupon books for restaurants and entertainment, but I will.

Learning from the Past or Regrets, I've Had a Few

As the new year dawns, I can't help but think of some mistakes I've made in the past (not just the past year, but over my adult life). Not to dwell on them - just to remind myself not to make the same ones. So, I thought I would share some of the regrets I have in regard to spending or not spending. Maybe I will save you from making the same ones.

Lana's Top 10 Spending Regrets
10. Buying things on sale, just because they were on sale.
9. Buying things with coupons, just because I had coupons.
8. Grocery shopping without my coupons or my list.
7. Not being generous enough because I was afraid we couldn't afford it, yet finding enough money to eat out when we didn't have to.
6. Shopping without checking what I already owned first.
5. Buying a car based on a raise that had not yet been seen.
4. Buying a car on a lease plan.
3. Buying more at Christmas than we could afford.
2. Making large purchases on credit without a good plan for paying them off.
1. Credit cards, credit cards, credit cards!!!!!

I have many more regrets, but doing a couple of these once (and a few others too many times), changed our financial status in ways that are too scary to think about. Worse than the actual mistakes is, that in some cases, I knew better. I am resolving to be consistantly more intentional on how I use my money. Will you join me?

Focus

Well, I had to take a little break from blogging due to illness, and while I was away I asked my friends on my Quality Frugality FaceBook page to give me their opinion on something. So, here was my question: How do you use money wisely, yet not dwell on it or think about it all the time? Is it possible? Should we be thinking about it at all?

The reason I am interested in this is because I started being concerned that the focus of my blog would be so centered around money issues (it is about being frugal after all) that it would seem I was saying money is the center of a quality life. That is not my intent at all! Handling finances and controlling spending are part of our life on this earth, and if not done well, we can end up in some very bad places, but if it is what we focus on all the time, we will be miserable. You don't need to look far down the Hollywood Walk of Fame to see names of people that prove money does not buy happiness. Broken marriages, broken lives and broken bank accounts after making millions are our proof.

So, back to the question. My friend, Savvy Kate, responded this way, "I don't know how everyone else handles this, but what helps me is to remember that the money I have is not really mine. As cheesy as it sounds, God gave me the money I have...it's not mine. When I view my expenditures as the spending of someone else's money, it changes the way I view the money, itself, and the things bought with it." I like this. We are to take good care of what is given to us, whether that be money, friends, family, nature, good looks, smarts, talent, etc. Some of us are given or blessed with more of some of these than others. How we use them becomes our focus.

I can be the most musically talented person on earth (yeah right), but if I never sing or write a song or pick up an instrument, the talent is wasted on me. If I go to the other extreme and eat, breath, and speak music all the time, I will miss out on other things in life and will probably ruin relationships along the way. Balance is called for in this situation, as in most.

I don't have all the answers here, maybe none of the answers, but I did want to take a few moments to make it clear that lots of money and things do not equal quality living. I don't believe money should be our focus, but I do believe it is our responsibility to use it wisely. Having fun all the time shouldn't be our focus either, but there is a time for it. Helping our children learn to love life is not always possible. Bad things happen to everyone. But, teaching them about joy is important.

As we walk, skip, run and jump together through this journey of seeking to live with quality while maintaining frugality, I just want us to remember our focus is not money, but living the life we are put here to live and blessing those around us as we can.

Preparing for Battle

Does that sound like a strange title for a blog about shopping? Maybe, but I want to set a tone here. You are at war. With whom? Retailers. I worked in retail for over a decade, and I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, they want as much money as they can get from you. Does this mean they are evil? Well, I won't make that decision for you. Let's just say, they don't always have your best interests at heart.

So, how do you battle the Retail Beast? As promised, I will pass on some advice my momma gave me. I will also let you in on some marketing secrets I learned in my years of service to the RB. Mainly, I am going to give tips on grocery shopping this week. I'll deal with other retailers later, but if you are like me, a good chunk of your money after bills are paid goes to groceries, so we'll tackle that first.

When preparing for battle, you must arm yourself. For this battle you will need: weekly grocery store ads, a pad of paper, a pen, your coupon organizer (we'll deal with coupons another time) and some secret information. Oh, and a plan.

Your plan will be specific for your family's battle, but there are some key ingredients: a budgeted amount for groceries, an idea of how many meals you will prepare at home and access to recipes of or knowledge of how to cook healthy meals your family will actually eat. As I said in my post about finding your Quality Quotient, you may be a list maker who likes to have things written down and organized. If so, jot down some guidelines to come up with the plan for your family. If you don't write it down, know it inside and out. If you don't know your plan, your enemy will wound you soon after you enter the battlefield.

Now that you have a plan to guide you, take your first grocery store ad and look at the front page. Most of the good deals will be there. Here's your first secret tip: Most of these items are Loss Leaders. A loss leader is an item on which a store is willing to barely break even or even lose money to get you into the store. It's bait.

You can use loss leaders to your advantage by planning your week's meal menu around them. Also, there are a few grocery stores in which the only things I buy are loss leaders because their prices on everything else are outrageous. It will cost me less in gas to drive across town than it would to buy everything at that expensive store. Sometimes time wins out, but with these expensive stores, I do battle best when I run in, strike quickly at my targets and retreat to another battle front. Some stores price match, which can save you time and money, but that's a whole other subject for another day.

As you are looking at your Loss Leaders, decide what meals you could make with them. Here's what my mom used to say about those times when she was a young mom with babies and a husband to feed. "When tuna was on sale, that's what we had that week." Now, I'm not telling you to take it to that extreme unless you are at a place where you have to for a while, but if chicken is on sale, find several recipes you can make with chicken. Maybe hamburger or pork steaks or pot roast is on sale that week too. Plan out the week alternating the different flavors and serving different sides and vegetables, and no one will be the wiser.

I don't want to bog you down with too much counter-intelligence at one time, so I'll leave it here for now. Remember, know your enemy. Learn his weak spots. We'll go through battle together, and we will defeat the RB!

What My Momma Taught Me

Here's a little background. My daddy worked as a minister as I was growing up. My momma also worked after my brother and I started school, but neither made very much, so she had to really stretch the budget. Somehow, we always had the necessities and a little more.

I tell you this because my tendency toward the frugal is a bi-product of this environment. I always knew the value of a dollar and my mom gave me some tips to getting the most out of grocery money. Sometimes she fed a family of four on $25 a week (granted this was before inflation hit in the late 70's, but still...)

Sometimes we had more, but there were a few rules she followed most of the time that helped keep us afloat. I'm going to share those with you over the next few days. Some you may know and some you may choose not to follow. I'm just sharing. It's up to you what you do with it.

I can tell you this - when I have been lazy and not followed the guidelines I was taught, I have been sorry. That would be a great segway into a deeper subject dealing with making all kinds of mistakes in life, but this blog is about being frugal, not about listening to your momma, so I'll save the sermon.

What's your Quality Quotient?

A couple of weeks ago, our family went to the movies, not the regular movies...Oh no, we went all the way, baby - 3D, IMAX, stadium seating. Doesn't sound very frugal does it? It wasn't. We came out of the theater nearly $60 poorer with nothing to show for it but memories of a decent movie and a lot of really cool high-tech 3D stuff.

Was it worth it? To me, not so much, but to the kids - well, they loved it! We probably only do such a thing two or three times a year. I mean, that kind of money could almost pay our monthly natural gas bill. But we do it now and again because we do get something out of it - joy.

Could we live without it? Absolutely. Would this be one of the first things we would cut out if we were in financial trouble? Again, absolutely. But, as long as we can squeeze it into the budget occasionally, it is worth it for the experience and joy we receive from it.

Now, I could get all philosophical and talk about what good causes that $60 could have gone to, but sometimes we just need to enjoy something without guilt. How do we choose what is worth it? We have to make some decisions. You will too.

So here's the big question:

What does quality mean to you? Before you can make decisions about how to be frugal and still keep a certain quality of life, you have to define that for you and your family.

When our family has to cut back, we think about things we are willing to give up first. For example: to us, eating at restaurants is a luxury. We enjoy it, but we can do without it, or we can at least cut down on how often we go out. This may be more difficult for your family, but you may be willing to cut down on your clothing budget for a few months.

If you are a list maker, you may want to actually make up a notebook and answer a few questions formally. If you don't want to make a list, go through the following train of thought and store it in your brain somewhere. When you are making a decision about spending, pull out the list (either on paper or mentally) and check it.

Try these questions and tips and come up with some of your own if necessary. Don't slave over this. You can make more thorough lists later if you want. This exercise is just to get you thinking in a new way. Oh, and this is personal. You don't have to share your list with anyone, so be truthful.

1.Needs v Wants - What are real necessities and what are things we are just used to and like? For example: Food is a necessity. Eating out is not. Clothes are a necessity. Buying a new designer purse is not. Wait - don't hit exit! I'm not telling you not to buy the purse. We're not making decisions yet, just lists.

2.Quantity v Frugality - What necessities can be adjusted? Can you reduce, reuse, repair anything? This can get complicated, so just jot down some things that come to mind right away. Maybe you don't really need four paper towels to clean up a spill. Try one or two. Are three pairs of new shoes really necessary? Can you make it with one for now? Yes, even if they are on sale. Start small. Little savings add up.

3. Fun v Overindulgence - Now, pick some things that really give you and your family enjoyment. Mentally put a "Only Tamper With in Extreme Circumstances" label on them. Make sure when you make a budget (which I recommend, but will not tell you how to do. Google Dave Ramsey.) these things are in there. A yearly trip to the beach? Satellite TV? Expensive Coffee? If you will be overcome with sadness and will be tempted to mope around for months because you are giving it up...don't...at least not yet.

4. Practical v Habit - Get an overall feel for what is really important to you and your family and what has just become habit. Maybe buying a full bill of groceries every Wednesday is not necessary, just routine. Running out to see the big action movie of the summer on the first run weekend has become a family tradition. Could renting it 6 months later from Netflix or Redbox and enjoying a family evening with homemade popcorn become a new tradition instead? This is a time to prioritize things like tithes and giving also. What are your family's priorities?

5. Thoughtful v Manic - Check your motivation. You will make yourself crazy and broke if you buy on impulse, buy to impress, or buy to feel better about yourself. I'm not a shrink anymore than I am an accountant. I'm not going to diagnose you if you fall into one of these categories, but I will say I have done all of these things at one time or another and always lived to regret it.

Well, this should get you started. Don't get bogged down in details here, just start thinking about your choices and what you are willing to cut back or give up.

One of the best ways to cut back is through frugal grocery shopping. My next few blogs will highlight this subject. Send me your tips! If I use them I'll give you credit (unless you don't want your name mentioned).

What is Quality Frugality?

Today's economy...How many news stories have contained these words in the past year? I haven't even tried to count them, but I know it is enough to make it clear it is one of the main concerns for you and me. Every time I buy a cart full of groceries or fill up my tank with gas; every time I try to decide if we should replace something that is broken or repair it; every time I buy clothes for my growing kids, I have to acknowledge that the economy is affecting our family. If you are reading this blog, I am sure it is affecting you also.

So, what will happen next? Are we destined for bread lines and vouchers? Are all our children going to soon be in rags? I don't think so. I have more faith in our country than that. We do have to change our way of thinking, however. To throw a few cliches at you - we must "tighten our belts," "live lean" and "spend wisely."

Does this mean I am going to suggest you stop buying steak and resort to rice and beans? Well, not exactly. Does it mean my idea of thrift shopping is dumpster diving? Not usually. Unless you are really desperate or you are ready to cut everything back to bare bones, these things aren't necessary. I may go over some of these extreme measures at some point, but those aren't the main emphasis on this blog.

I propose there are ways to retain a good quality of life while living within a budget. You can be thrifty without completely giving up your dignity. It may mean you don't have champagne and caviar, but you can eat healthy food that has good flavor. You may not be able to buy the newest thing on the rack at that high-end trendy story you love, but you can still dress stylishly and look great. With some tips from this blog and some of your own practical thinking and planning, you can soon learn to live the life of Quality Frugality.