Josh Elledge - Chief Executive Angel
So let's talk Extreme Couponing for a moment. You probably saw a couponer roll through the checkout with nothing more than ketchup, energy drinks and laundry detergent? You probably sat there wondering what that person was going to eat for dinner that night.
This is exactly the trap so many new (and even experienced!) couponers fall into. They are so charged up about grabbing the free and nearly free stuff that they forget about a vital component of saving on groceries: meal planning. As a result, they may have a house full of food but nothing for dinner.
According to the Economic Research Service in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 43 percent of all our food dollars in the U.S. in 2012 were spent eating out. That's crazy! In 1970, only 25 percent of our food money was spent away from home.
Eating out is almost always more expensive than home cooking, and it's usually not nearly as healthy. If you've had trouble figuring out how to make your couponing work with your meal planning, here are a couple tips.
Have a few easy, go-to meals in your repertoire
Start by identifying those easy to make meals your family loves. It could be burgers on the grill, spaghetti and meatballs on the stovetop or a roast simmering all day in the crockpot. Make an ingredient list for those meals and stick it on the pantry wall. We'll come back to it in a minute.
Look through the ad and coupon match-ups for obvious choices
Next, as you are planning your shopping trip, look for those items that can most easily translate into meals for your family. At this point, we're not concerned with the absolute cheapest things in the store. We just want to find those items that you know you can turn into a meal. For example, if hot dogs and corn on the cob are on sale, that could be one meal for the week.
Stock up on the ingredients you'll use
This is where your stockpile comes into play. In addition to the items you know you can make into meals this week, look for sale ingredients you can use for future meals. You can use the ingredient list from your go-to meals as a guide, but don't stop there. Also look for other staples that are versatile and have long shelf lives ““ rice, flour, beans and cereal are examples.
Use your savings to round out your pantry
Now, take your ingredient list and complete an inventory of your pantry. What's missing? For now, go ahead and buy one or two of each of the missing ingredients, even if it means buying something (gasp!) at full price. Your coupon savings can be used for this purpose, and the goal here is to make sure you'll always have all the ingredients you need to make a family favorite meal. However, you don't want to keep buying these items at full price. Watch for them to go on sale in the future and then stock up.
Coordinate your pantry and coupons each week
Finally, it's time to put it all together. For ongoing menu planning, I recommend you start by looking for the best weekly deals. Find the great buys and decide whether you can make a meal out of them. Pay particular attention to fresh produce which can be extremely cheap in season and can serve as a healthy basis for many meals.
Once you have a partial menu plan based on the weekly deals, fill it in with meals you can make from the pantry. Remember, you should always have all the ingredients for your go-to meals and those are your fallbacks if you run out of other ideas.
Visit SavingsAngel.com for some real-world examples of how to make this work. This week, we've started posting meal suggestions based on Meijer coupons and sales but look for other grocers to be featured in the future.
