Saturday, March 26, 2011

Week 3: Living Healthy with Coupons Challenge

This third week of my coupon challenge has revealed some interesting findings. I set out on this challenge to see whether it were possible to have a healthful diet while using coupons. The first week showed I realized tremendous savings as I stocked up on healthy dried goods. The second week showed I needed to buy only fresh foods to complement the dried foods in my pantry. This third week is showing that the use of coupons is almost unnecessary.

With a stockpile of healthy foods on hand bought with coupons, the need to use more coupons this week was slim and almost nonexistent. Only 1 item I bought was gotten with a coupon. Snapple 6 packs were on sale and I had a coupon for a dollar off. I bought the Snapple because I enjoy drinking them from time to time, not because I needed them or would use them in preparing an inexpensive meal.

In fact, though using coupons would save me money in the short term, the continual use of coupons for preparing meals would seem to suggest that I would spend more than I had to. Simply not being lazy about cooking meals from scratch probably saves about $20 to $30.

A good cookbook with recipes you can trust is an invaluable asset for people who want to save money and have a healthful diet. However, the two things to remember are:

1) The amount of time you will have each day (or each month or week) to prepare meals.
2) The availability of ingredients found in the cookbook recipes.

A star chef with a cookbook that includes meals with unrealistic prep time and/or expensive and hard-to-find ingredients will cause more frustration than help. For example, while I enjoy watching Bobby Flay and others on the Food Network, the recipes in one of the cookbooks of his I bought included too many ingredients that were hard for me to find. At the time, I needed a cooking resource that made use of common ingredients found in my own neighborhood grocery store.

Two good series I do enjoy are those by I Rachel Ray and Southern Living. The cooking and prep times on the recipes in these books fit my lifestyle, and the ingredients rarely include items that would be hard to find in an average grocery store.

It seems so far that coupons are unnecessary. Unless you use them weekly to stockpile, they provide only minimal savings. The key seems to be using coupons to set up a pantry and then making wise choices about cooking and food selection to ensure lasting savings.


SEE ALSO:

Coupons and Healthy Living

Week 1 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 2 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 4 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Week 2: Living Healthy with Coupons Challenge

It is the end of week 2 of my coupon challenge, where I set out see if it is possible to maintain a healthy diet while using coupons. This week I found that I did not need to use any coupons at all to complete my grocery shopping. I had enough staples like rice, beans, canned tomatoes, and the like to be able to pull together healthy meals for a week with just a few fresh vegetables.

Vegetables themselves can be rather expensive, especially when you buy them out of season. At the start of my coupon challenge, I wrote that condition of the challenge would be that I was not going to run around to multiple grocery stores in search of the lowest prices. I have a favorite grocer with prices that I find reasonable; I stick with that store. However, buying vegetables from that grocer is not my preference.

The grocer I visit to buy my vegetables does require some driving to get to, but I usually try to plan it around another trip to make the gas expenditures worth it. On my last visit to vegetable store, I bought tomatoes, onions, green and red peppers, strawberries, bananas, and chili powder (which it turns out I did not need). The strawberries happened to be on sale for a dollar. They were not on my list but seemed to have a good price.

Results from the coupon challenge this week suggest that once a stockpile of staples is bought with coupons and stored, the grocery bill for subsequent weeks reduces even further. With only fresh vegetables and fruits needed to make a healthy meal, you avoid the regular expensive purchase of boxed goods.

All over the Internet, there are website authors touting how much money they saved each week buying packaged goods with coupons. They say things like, “I saved $35 on last grocery bill” while never detailing whether the items on that bill included anything that was actually worth eating. It would be a shame to find that these families lived exclusively on packaged goods.

Are you following along with my grocery challenge? What is your take on my results so far?


SEE ALSO:

Coupons and Healthy Living

Week 1 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 3 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 4 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Week 1: Living Healthy with Coupons Challenge

Last week I undertook the challenge of seeing whether it would be possible to live a healthy lifestyle and eat a healthful diet while clipping coupons. My observation that most coupons are for packaged goods, which are usually high in fat, sodium, and fillers, led me to see if I could save money clipping coupons while purchasing only foods that I chose to include in my diet—healthy foods and foods that I enjoy.

My first shopping trip with the challenge mind gained me a savings of $12 with a total original cost of $37. Using a combination of grocery store sales and grocery store and manufacturer coupons, I picked up apple juice (from concentrate), frozen vegetables, packaged salad, peanut butter, whole grain bread, salad dressing, cereal, frozen perogies, and frozen pizzas. Of all the items I bought, the pizzas were likely least healthy.  

Despite having to use coupons, resisting the urging to buy junk food and needless items on sale was the hardest part of my shopping trip. Doritos were on sale: buy one, get one free. In the past, I would seize upon a sale like that without thinking twice. I would have picked them up and thought I had made out like a bandit. Is it any wonder that obesity in America is an epidemic?

Food pricing like “buy one, get one free” on chips and “buy one for $3” on veggies discourages the eating of healthy meals. However, this week’s experiment with coupons suggests that healthy eating is possible even if you are on a budget.

 As I move on to week two, my main concern is whether a regular savings of $12 or more a week can be expected.


SEE ALSO:

Coupons and Healthy Living

Week 2 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 3 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 4 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Coupons and Healthy Living

Many people know already about the benefits of using coupons. Manufacturers buy ads in local newspapers and include cut-out discounts (coupons) to encourage you to try or continuing buying their products. The concept is simple enough, and the savings you reap can be significant. Hard core coupon users boast oftentimes about using coupons and discounts to get items for free. Others brag about their low grocery bills. One woman I read about bought groceries for a week for only four dollars.

Impressed by the results that others have had, I looked into couponing myself. On my very first shopping trip with coupons I saved thirty-five dollars. That's a pretty good ROI for just knowing how to use a pair of scissors and shopping purposefully.

As weeks passed, I also learned the down side to using coupons: Many of the items are prepackaged goods. Items like these are typically chock full of sodium, fat, and fillers. If you typically buy foods that contain those ingredients (as most people do these days), you will be able to reap high savings at the grocery store nearly every week. Coupons for chips, cookies, fruit cups drenched in sugary syrup, and no-nutrient white bread come in abundance in the weekly coupon circular. Anyone trying to have a healthy diet and save money at the same time will likely find it difficult.

But not impossible.

Beginning this week, and for the next 4 weeks, I am going to test the ability to use coupons while sustaining a healthy diet. Given that healthy does not mean sugar-free, fat-free, or taste-free, I should be able to do this and still have delicious meals.

Some people will argue that unless I eat raw or have meals amounting to the inverted pyramid and such that I will not really be eating healthy. That will be true to some degree. However, I am not going to change my eating habits to fit the confines of this test. I am not being paid to do this, so I'm only doing as much as feels comfortable for me. And this will likely include some junkfood, but not as much as if I were to buy all my groceries with coupons.

The other rule to this test is that I will not be traipsing around the city from one store to the next in search of the lowest deal. There are three markets near my home, and if I cannot get what I need from there or if I do not feel like walking to the next store just to buy an item cheaper, I won't. This test, for as much as it is about saving money, is also about being realistic and not modifying my behavior to start something I will never maintain.

If you already use coupons, have you been successful at having regular, healthy meals while trying to save money?


SEE ALSO:

Week 1 -- Living Healty with Coupons

Week 2 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 3 -- Living Healthy with Coupons

Week 4 -- Living Healthy with Coupons