Saving Money on Groceries

Groceries can add up to being a huge expense, and the more people in the house, the bigger the expense. I really miss the days when our 3 kids would barely finish a box of mac n cheese. Now, making mac n cheese requires 2 boxes for just those 3, or 3 boxes if we are all eating it.

One of the ways I save both time and money on groceries, is by using Savings Angel. I scoffed at the site for a few years. After all, I knew what they were doing, and knew I could do it for free on my own. What Savings Angel does, is finds the sale ad for YOUR area, and they go down the list, item by item, matching the sales with coupons from the Sunday paper, or coupons found online.

The hardest part of doing this on your own, is knowing where to find the online coupons, and taking the time out of your hectic schedule to do it. It is time consuming! Especially if you you have to sort through all your coupons each week, to see what you have.

Then there's the mess of removing expired coupons, and clipping all the new ones, and putting them in their place. It can be a total pain. In fact, it can down right wear a person out. I was an avid coupon clipper and shopper for a long time, but as the kids got older, and my time got shorter, I just let it fall to the side.

Recently, I decided I can't afford to shop the way I was, not anymore. I needed to save more money, and get more bang for our bucks. So, I sucked it up, and started to try again. I quickly remembered why I had stopped- all the work put into it, the time spent pouring over ads, sorting through the coupons, it was too much stress for me to be able to get it going.

About that time, a good friend of mine and my brother both signed up for Savings Angel. After talking with my brother about all the tips I had for coupon clipping (I had a lot, I realized!), I decided maybe Savings Angel would be a kick in the fanny to get me going on saving money again.

Savings Angel is a pay to use site, and there are similar sites out there that do the same service for free. However, what I found, was when I compared the SA site to the free sites, very few of the free sites listed had all the deals listed. Most of them missed coupons along the way, some missed the entire deal along the way. They just did not compare once I started looking at both.

Savings Angel is $19.95 per month. When you buy the first month, the second month is free, so up front, it's $19.95 for 2 months of service. There is a forum for help, and "mentors" who can also help people one on one. The site has coupons to print, and points out coupons found all over the web to print. When they list a sale item, they list all the non-expired coupons that were in the Sunday paper or online, AND, they tell you what week that coupon was in, or if it was in a magazine, or they show a link on where to print it.

Now, $20 a month is a big deal, I get that. For me, I look at what I'm saving on groceries that I wasn't saving before. My first 3 trips to the grocery store resulted in just over $100 worth of groceries. I paid just under $20 total for all 3 trips, saving me $80 off my grocery bill!

$80 is a lot of money saved. With a teenager, a preteen, and a school aged child in the house, we go through food a lot more quickly now. Getting the freezer filled is a big deal for us, because of how quickly we can deplete it.

Anyway, I highly recommend Savings Angel for anyone who needs the extra help saving money, like I did. It's been a very helpful site so far. Just click the banner above, or the image below to check the site out!