Print a coupon and receive 15% off your next The Children's Place purchase.

Did you know that you can make money selling grocery coupons on eBay? Selling coupons on eBay can be a great way to make money on the side, lots of people are doing this already and so can you. This is a great project for stay at home moms or people looking to make a little bit of extra cash on the side.

The first step of the process is deciding how to obtain your coupons. The Sunday paper can be especially useful in finding coupons. In order to have a large amount of coupons you can purchase several copies of the Sunday paper or if you wish you can ask friends, family, neighbors and coworkers to save the coupons for you. Another favorite source of mine is women's magazines. If you wish to not purchase the magazines yourself you can also ask friends, family, neighbors and coworkers for theirs. These are just a few possible sources of coupons. With a little creative thinking you can come up with other sources. However make sure to stay away from Internet coupons. The problem with Internet coupons is that some are counterfeit, and some stores won't accept them. You want to make sure your buyers can use the coupons and if they don't they will most likely leave negative feedback.

Before you list your coupons on eBay, you want to do some research. Go on eBay and search completed listings for similar coupons. This will give you a general idea of how much you can sell your coupons for. Also decide if you want to sell your coupons individually or in a group. Most sellers will sell coupons in a batch. Finally clip your coupons and sort them out.

The next step is creating your listing. When you list your coupons you want to make sure you have a clear description. Make sure you include the amount of coupons you are selling, what product they are for and the coupon discount. The most important part of the description is the expiration date of the coupon. Make sure you let buyers know the expiration date of each coupon and use this date to factor in your auction end date. You want to make sure the buyer has enough time to use the coupon after receiving it in the mail. Buyers won't be happy if the coupons are already expired by the time they arrive.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1128599/make_money_selling_grocery_coupons.html?cat=3

You're just a CLICK away from over 50 money-saving coupons!

Join millions of CoolSavings members
who save with name-brand coupons that
you can easily print from your computer.

Plus, enjoy full access to:

* Free Samples
* Grocery Coupons
* Online Discounts
* Recipes
* Money-savings tips & advice
* All 100% FREE!

Visit now and start saving BIG today.

You can also see this post on TopekaKidsRock.com! Be sure to visit there today for a list of all the fun things happening around Topeka this week!

Getting Control of The Grocery Bill Part IV

Coupons. What more can I say? These little money savers have helped me save a TON of money! I purposely saved this post for last in my series because using coupons can be quite overwhelming when you first start. While using coupons is not something you HAVE to do it is something I suggest that everyone look into.

Why Use coupons?
If you have certain products you are going to buy no matter the cost, then why not use a coupon? For instance if you only buy Tide, then clip that $1 off coupon and save yourself a $1! Do I need to explain further?

Where to get coupons:
Coupons are pretty easy to come by these days. The easiest place to get them is in the Sunday paper. Here in Topeka you have 2 main options of papers: The Topeka Capital Journal or the Kansas City Star. Both of these papers usually contain at least 2 coupon inserts. These are called "Smartsource" and "Red Plum". The first Sunday of every month there is usually a 3rd insert called the "P&G Brand Saver."

You can also print coupons from on-line resources. Two of the post popular are coupons.com and smartsource.com. There are actually about 10 sites I print coupons from. To see those please visit my blog The Grocery Weekly and scroll down to the header "Coupon Sites". There you will find an array of places to print coupons from.

Which ones do I clip?
Which coupons you clip and how many is up to you. I personally clip them all and organize them in a big black binder filled with baseball card holder pages. Others clip them and put them in envelops. Some just clip the coupons they know they will use and wait to use them. For organizing options see the post on my blog about this here. There is no one right way, it is just important that you find out what works for you.

Where will I use them?
You can use coupons at just about any place that will take them. Most major grocery/drug store retailers in Topeka accept them. Some of those places include: Dillons, Hy-Vee, Walmart, K-mart, Target, CVS and Walgreens. There are others out there too.

This is a pretty brief overview of coupons. If you want to know more about using coupons I invite you to explore my blog for more infomration. Another blog I have always found helpful when using coupons is Money Saving Mom.

Well that is it for this short series "Getting Control of the Grocery Bill." In the coming weeks I will be sharing many other helpful hints and tricks I have learned when it comes to saving money. If you have questions or comments I can be reached by email at thegroceryweekly@gmail.com

This is copy of the weekly at TopekaKidsRock.com Be sure to head over there to see all the exciting events going on around Topeka!

Getting Control of the Grocery Bill Part III

In the 1st post of the series I talked about the need to have a grocery spending plan. Last week I discussed what items with in that spending plan might be creating "waste" This week I want to focus on the idea of menu planning.

I cannot remember a time growing up when my mother did not have a dinner plan for the week. Every Saturday morning she stood at the kitchen counter and asked us what we wanted for dinner that week. She then would make up a store list based on what she decided we would have and other things we needed for the week and off to the store she went. This was my first introduction to menu planning. I hope in this post to give you other practical ways and suggestions to plan a menu.

Why I Menu Plan:
I firmly believe that having a plan really does help you spend less at the grocery store. When you have a plan it is easy to stick to buying only what you need (and what you budgeted for) and hopefully you don't get side tracked buying things you don't need. For more reasons to menu plan see this post here... I love it!

How I Menu Plan:
I grocery shop once a week, therefore I make up a menu plan once a week. You can see many of those menu plans here. I usually make a plan for at least 5-6 dinners knowing that a few those meals will serve leftovers for lunch and even an extra dinner. I know that coming up with 5-6 dinner ideas a week can be daunting so I created what I call "Our Family Favorites" list. This list is comprised of at least 30-40 meals that my family likes to eat (my husband calls these "do overs") and I know the recipe and ingredients to off the top of my head. These meals can be as simple as grilled cheese or as complicated as lasagna. This list gives me flexibility and allows to almost always create meals based on what is on sale for the week in our local grocery fliers and with what I have on hand.

Menu Planning around weekly sales:
If you are looking to cut your grocery bill a great way is by using the local grocery fliers as a starting point. Look to see what is on sale for the week and try to come up with dinner ideas based on the sales. Not all items in your menu are going to be sale items for the week and that is okay. Just look to these as a good place to start. If you are unsure of what a good deal for the week might be at our local grocery stores, you can always look here and here to get ideas. Along with the weekly flier deals look to see what you already have on hand. Try using what is in your pantry and freezer. This helps ensure that food is not getting wasted or going bad before it is used.

These are just few ideas that help me and I am truly not the expert when it comes to menu planning. So below I want to encourage you to visit some other blogs that I visit often and have learned a lot from!

I'm an Organizing Junkie
Money Saving Mom (link to her other blog Biblical Womanhood)

If you are looking for inexpensive recipes to start menu planning with here a few of the sites I use:

Dining on a dime
The Aldi Queen
Miserly Moms
$5 Dinners

If you are interest in seeing a weekly Menu Plan based on our weekly Dillons and Hy-vee ad I would encourage you to visit these 2 sites here:

Amy's Finer Things
Cutting coupons in KC

One other thing I will mention is this 17 e-book promotion that is going on right now and ends March 23rd. If you are new to this whole idea of menu planning and saving money at the grocery store you may find these books helpful.

Next week I will be posting the 4th and final post this series. It will focus on how using coupons can also help you get your grocery bill under control.

This is what's posted over at TopekaKidsRock.com . Be sure to head over there to see all the happenings around Topeka next week!

Getting Control of the Grocery Bill Part II

This the second post in my series titled "Getting Control of the Grocery Bill." In the 1st post I discussed knowing how much you are spending and what a good amount to spend is. In this post I want to suggest food items that might create "waste" in your grocery bill.

In my personal opinion one of the biggest ways to waste your precious grocery dollars is by buying unnecessary snacks/convenience items. I say this because I have experienced it first hand. When we were 1st married with no kids our grocery budget was $25o.00 a month. After the birth of our 1st child and a job change we needed to cut our grocery budget to $160.00 a month. The most helpful way to meet my new goal was to stop buying snack and convenience items. It was a hard adjustment at first, but we slowly got used to it. (As a side note, my husband and I have since both shed those extra pounds we always said we wanted to get rid of!)

What I consider snack/convenience items:
I consider snack/convenience items anything that comes in a box... for the most part. Mainly for us those snack items are/were granola bars, little debbies, snack packs (individual 100 calories packs, or other convenience take along items), crackers, chips, cookies, pop tarts, frozen snacks (pizza rolls, hot pockets, lean cuisine meals), soda, ice cream, instant anything and even cereal.

The reality about most of these products is that they don't really add any nutritional value to your diet and they are terribly over priced! Below are some ideas to still have snack/convenience items in your house but at less of the cost.

Breakfast items:
Instead of buying frozen waffles, pancakes, toaster strudels or other frozen meals make things like muffins, breads, pancakes and waffles from scratch and then freeze them. The defrost button on the microwave works great for things like this. Pancakes and waffles reheated in a toaster are also a hit!

If you are cereal eaters try eating less of it (like only 3 days a week instead of 6) or buying it when it is a good price. Aldi cereal is around $1.70 a box and my thought when it comes to cereal is that if it doesn't beat the Aldi price I am not buying it.

Snacks:
Who doesn't love snacks? We love them in our house and have them regularly! Instead of buying little debbies and boxed/bagged cookies I just simply make my own sweet treats. I make a big batch of cookies and freeze them so we can have them on hand. As for chips and crackers I would say buy less of them and sub in more fruits and veggies.

Convenience/frozen boxed items:
These are things like Hamburger Helper meals, instant potatoes, instant rice pouches, frozen pizzas, etc. I know these make for a quick and easy meal but you can often make the same thing from scratch for less. Believe me I know time is an issue and I am not saying never use these items, just start using them less.

Keep in mind I am NOT telling you that you SHOULD NEVER buy any of the items I have mentioned. I am simply suggesting that if you find your grocery bill is out of control consider finding ways to cut these items out or buy them for less. I know it is a hard adjustment at first especially if you have children or husbands that are particularly used to these food items, but the savings is well worth it if that is your goal.

Now I will confess for a short time we really didn't eat many snack/convenience items because we simply didn't have the money to buy them. We still don't have much wiggle room in our budget, but I find through the use of coupons and smart shopping I am often able to have some snack/convenience items in our house for 75% of the actual cost or I get them for free. I do this by using coupons and the timing on this post couldn't have gotten better since Dillons is offering some great deals on snack items this week! You can get many of the items I mentioned in this post for at least 1/2 of the regular cost. Check out those deals here! If you are looking for inexpensive meal ideas made from scratch you can see what I use here.

The 3rd post in this series will come next Thursday and in that I will focus on the benefits of menu planning and how that can also help you get control of the grocery bill.

In case you missed this post at TopekaKidsRock.com I am re-posting here for you to read. Part II of this series will be posted next friday.

In the past 2 weeks I have received many phone calls and emails all saying the same thing, "Help, I need to get control of my grocery bill!" My blog is dedicated to posting current deals and weekly updates but I find that new readers are having a hard time figuring out where to start in the world of frugal shopping and coupons. To kick my time off on topekakidsrock.com I thought I would do a series on basic ways you can start to gain control of the grocery bill before diving into the world of coupons. What I share in this series is what I share with anybody who asks me for help. Please keep in mind that it is all just a suggestion.

For the 1st post of this series I want to focus on the importance of knowing how much you are actually spending on groceries. If saving money is the goal then knowing what is being spent is important so it can be known what can be saved.

Define what groceries are.
In my household the term groceries refers to food items only. Everything else is either toiletries or paper products, thus I have a different amount of money I spend on each category every month. If you consider all those items groceries that is okay, just account for it and create your "spending plan" accordingly. Just so you know up front I am what one friend deemed the other night a "budget freak"!

Know what is an appropriate amount of money to be spending on groceries (food).
Every one has a different income level and therefore can either spend more or less. If you only live on $30,00 a year chances are your spending is going to look vastly different than someone who might live on $80,000 a year. So for this I recommend a percentage guideline table. The tables here (scroll down and click which ones best describes your family size) gives a suggestion for how much of your net income you should be spending where. In the example of a family of 6 you can see that if you are living on $25,000-$65,000 per year you should not be spending more than 14-15% of your NET income on food. So for a family of 6 living on $45,00o (net spendable of $35000 a year after taxes) per year the most you should spend monthly on food is around $400 a month. For our family this also includes eating out.

Develop a "grocery spending plan."
I recognize that the word budget is scary so don't even go there, just think spending plan. By this I mean have a set amount of money that you are going to spend on groceries (food) every month and STICK TO IT! It might be according to the spending guideline I presented above or it might be more or less. For our family we live on drastically less than we possibly could simply because of debt. That lousy student loan eats up a lot of our spending plan, therefore we have to account for it other places. You may have to do this, too, if you have debt you are paying off or if you have savings goals you are trying to meet.

On that note begin thinking about needs versus wants and where you might have wasteful spending in your grocery bill. This will be our topic next on Thursday!

Do you have other ideas that work for you? Please be sure to share them in comments section!

Hey everyone I well you know I love my coupons and as I learn more I want to share it with you. I decided to look into this after I went shopping at my local Thum Thomb the other day and they would not accept inernet coupons. The funny thing about this is they offer coupons on there website. Now how can you refuse them and promote them at the same time? That is the question Mr. Thum Thumb, I had to fight with the two managers to get my coupons taken. So everyone stand your gound if you have the policy at hand.

With the holiday being here and with me spending alot of unnesscary money I have decided to dedicate 2009 to mastering my coupon'ing. I noticed that when I blog my updates I keep myself on task better and save more.

To start off I have started my new section called Coupon'ing 101 to get us equiped with the basic lingo. 

To start off coupons can be acquired from several different sources. I am going to explain to you a few of the sources that I know of that you can use to start building up your coupon supply.

• Sunday newspapers coupon inserts:
  This is the best source for coupons. Every Sunday, you can expect to see 1-4 coupon inserts in your paper. These inserts will consist of:
  
  
  P&G, General Mills, Red Plum and Smart Source
  
  I do have several suggestions that will help you maximize your savings potential with newspaper coupons:
  
  
  • I reccomend that you purchase one newspaper for every two people in your household.
    
  • To see if you might want to purchase more newspapers then this, I suggest you check out Taylortown Preview every Saturday for a list of coupons coming up in that Sunday's paper.
    
  • If you live in a town with a smaller newspaper circulation, you may notice that you don't get all of the coupon inserts every Sunday. The only way combat this? To purchase, or subscribe to, a bigger city newspaper instead. The larger cities newspaper will carry all of the inserts because it reaches more readers then a small town newspaper.
    
  • Always check the Parade insert in the Sunday's newspaper. It usually contains one coupon in it.
  • Also start swapping groups with friends there is always stuff that you use that ther wont.
• Magazines:
  This is another good source for coupons. Some magazines contain more coupons then others. One magazine I suggest you buy every month is All You. It is sold exclusively at Wal-Mart and through subscription. Priced at only $2.24 an issue, it contains a plethora of coupons every month that easily earns you the price of the magazine back. Check my site every month for a list of all of the coupons in the upcoming All You issue.
  
  
• Internet Printable Coupons:
  The second best thing to newpaper coupons are IPC's or "internet printable coupons." There are several websites that offer a list of coupons that you can print off:
  
  
  • Betty Crocker
  • Box Tops for Education
  • Coupon Bug
  • Eat Better America
  • Home Solutions
  • Red Plum
  
  Here are a few things you should know about internet printable coupons:
  
  
  • MOST, not all, internet coupons can be printed off twice. Just hit the back button and then refresh.
    
  • Some stores will not accept IPC's if they aren't printed in color.
    
  • Some stores do not accept printable coupons at all. Know a store's coupon policy before you try to use printable coupons. TIP: If you can, have a copy of the store's that you frequent most often coupon policy with your coupons. That way if you have any problems, you can show them what their coupon policy states.
• Catalinas:
  These are coupons that are printed out by stores that can only be used in that specific store. They can range anywhere from money off of a certain item to money off of your next purchase. You will see catalinas printed off a lot at grocery stores.
  
  
• Blinkies:
  These are little red machines located throughout a store that are placed in front of a specific product offering money off of that product. They are called "blinkies" because the machine has a small light on it that blinks on and off to draw your attention to it.
  
  
• Peelies:
  This type of coupon is sometimes hard to spot, and I have come home several times after grocery shopping only to notice that a few of my items had coupons on them. Peelies are coupons that are stuck onto products. At the register, just notify your cashier when you have a product with a peelie on it.