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by Tricia

It’s Thursday, but it has felt like a Friday all day today. So, I thought I would cruise around the blog-o-sphere and do a little round-up of sorts.

I may be getting back into using coupons for groceries. So I found this article interesting. Danielle tallied her deals at Kroger. She saved quite a bit.

Beverly sends me some of the greatest links. She didn’t disappoint with the following one. I haven’t tried the recipes yet (I’m still working on switching gears with our meal changes so I’m slow at trying new things right now). But I have this one bookmarked: 5 Dollar Dinners.

I LOVE salads, but lettuce and I do not get along. Our lettuce goes bad by mid-week. Now that we only go to the grocery store weekly I only buy enough for a few days so none goes to waste. Jeremy at Generation X Finance is my new best friend. He wrote a post about preparing lettuce to last all week and I am so pumped to give it a try this weekend!

by Tricia

More and more, we are relying on the internet for non-grocery purchases. We still look at items we need in local stores, but there are some great deals on the internet. You also have the advantage of reading reviews on products. That is something that has turned out to be very valuable.

Since I want to get the best deal possible on quality products, I developed a plan that has been successful so far (although I am always looking for ways to improve it!).

My first stop for shopping is always Amazon.com. It’s a great starting point to look at different brands and read the reviews. They have so many products. Once I find a product that is within our price point and of good quality, I note the make and model.

I enter that information into Google and look at other stores that are selling the same item. I compare the prices and note the shipping costs. Note: If you find the product on Amazon and it is being shipped by a third party company – also look at that company’s website. Sometimes the price is cheaper!

I don’t stop there, though. I take some of the best prices that I find and one at a time plug the company names into Google and add the word “coupons” after it. If you haven’t done that before, you will be amazed at how many coupon sites there are. I look through quite a few of the sites for the best coupon code deals. All coupon sites are not created equal.

The end result is hopefully some substantial savings. Of course, my way of internet shopping may not be the best way, so if you have a system that works and you want to share – feel free to do so! 🙂