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You gotta pay for the groceries right? Join Better as we talk to one mom who figured out a way to pay for a whole cart with only coupons.

Transcript

Audra Lowe: Now you got to pay for that food right, so if your new year’s resolution is to find ways to got back on your spending and safe some money in 2010, Stephanie Nelson is here she’s the author of the Coupon Moms guide to cutting your grocery bills in half. Stephanie is got some great tips that are certainly doing the trick because I know you save a lot of money. How much over a years pretty time? Stephanie Nelson: Well I’ve keep track. Audra Lowe: Yeah. Stephanie Nelson: Average of hundred dollars a week between sales and coupons and part of it is how old I am, it’s 16 years. Audra Lowe: 16 years around? Stephanie Nelson: Since my son was born and if you do the map that’s about $80,000. Audra Lowe: I like that. Stephanie Nelson: And maybe I’ll be able send them to college if they get said. Audra Lowe: Exactly. I know you’ve been here before and we talking about coupons but you wrote the book and you structured it a little different and here is a good reason why, can you tell everybody? Stephanie Nelson: Yes, I’ve been teaching people how to use coupons and how to save money on groceries for about 9 years and what I hear over and over again is that people think well I don’t have the time to do that, I’m not organize enough. So I really wanted to write a book that would help any shopper, save money under groceries because we all have different personalities and give simple tips throughout the book that are gear to each shopping personality. Audra Lowe: And I love the fact, you have a quiz at the very beginning you guys can take the quiz and it determines what kind of a shopper you are because not everybody is going to be collecting coupons the same way right? Stephanie Nelson: That’s exactly right or may not use coupons at all. Audra Lowe: Yeah. Stephanie Nelson: There are 22 chapters in the book and one chapter on coupons and there are some many other strategies that are important to learn if you want to feed your family a healthy diet at healthy cost. Audra Lowe: And speaking of strategy you say that buying a book is not necessarily always better, a lot of people thinks it is the best way. Stephanie Nelson: That’s right, people think bigger is better. I said two things one is when your comparing prices on different sizes be sure to look at the unit price per ounce or per pound and also consider the types of things that make sense to buy in bulk. And it make sense to buy meat or chicken in bulk and divide the pack into smaller quantities and may not make sense to buy the biggest boxes cereal. If you are a coupon user it might be the smaller box that’s half price, you have a coupon you make it the smaller box free that’s the better deal. Audra Lowe: What about tracking the pricing though because some people scourer like five, six, seven, eight, nine sale papers from different grocery stores. How do you really track them in most efficient way? Stephanie Nelson: What would I do is that I look at 20 items our family buys the most often that’s probably where you spending majority of your grocery dollars. And pay attention just for about five or six weeks what the prices of those items at your store and what you can see is that some items change price every other week like boneless chicken in my case it’s on sale every other week. Some items might not change prices for six weeks or two months like my favorite branded coffee. So once you pay attention to that ones you will have an understanding of how much you need to stock up on when that items hits its slowest price. Audra Lowe: Once you see what’s on sale kind to plan your meals around that too that’s the exact way to do that. Stephanie Nelson: Exactly, review the add circular before you leave home, plan your meals around what’s on sale and guess what if you are a busy shopper and you don’t have time for that that’s okay when you get to the store pick up the circular and look at what’s on the front page I guarantee you those are going to be the best deals in the store that week. You don’t have to think too hard and that’s what you have for dinner. Audra Lowe: What about organic food though because most people think organic products always much higher in terms of price and not too many discount on them but you have a whole chapter dedicated just the organic products and you have a little experiment yourself when you found out for us how you can save money right? Stephanie Nelson: That’s right, actually I was very challenge so many people have said, why you can’t save money on organic foods so I research it, I hired some researchers we we’re determine to find everywhere to save an organic food and I will tell you what we’ve learned. You can actually get great coupons for organic food if you send and email to the company website and asks polite thing you know eating organic food is important to me. If you have coupons could you please mail them to me and include your address. I did that and I got all kinds of coupon in some case for absolutely free items which how I was able to get cartful of organic groceries free on the book and I have a list of all the companies and the website address. Audra Lowe: There is so much information in this book fantastic, thank you for putting it together. Stephanie Nelson: Thank you so much. Audra Lowe: Good to having you Stephanie. Alright if you guys want to get other greats strategic shopping methods and money saving tips you can pick up a copy of Stephanie’s books it’s called The Coupon Moms Guide to Cutting your Grocery Bills in Half and it’s available now.