Save money, live better....and not just at WalMart!

Couponing and taking advantages of sales has saved us hundreds of dollars over the past few months. Here’s what we do:

We take advantage of the Sunday newspaper ads. P&G Brand Saver, Redplum, and SmartSource are generally the most helpful. Sometimes, we find fast-food coupons, like those for McDonalds or Arby’s. Note: Sometimes the McDonald’s coupons are location-specific.

We find coupons on the Internet. Most of them, we print through MyPoints.com, which gives us points for printing and redeeming Coupons.com or SmartSource coupons. There is also a forum on SlickDeals.net that has an alphabetized list of coupons. Sometimes, we’ll find a really good coupon courtesy of Facebook. We recently discovered The Coupon High as well, which is also on Facebook.

Before leaving the house, we make a shopping list. It’s a great way to keep the shopping trip organized and save money. (Have you ever been grocery shopping while hungry?) Then, we go through the list and find any coupons that match what’s on the list. I then organize the coupons in the same way that the list is organized and put them in a separate envelope inside my coupon file. This saves me from the hassle of having to dig through my rather extensive coupon file while shopping or checking out.

Getting to the store early has also been a big help for us. We do most of our grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, which puts bright yellow stickers on their meat specials for the day. Those are generally easier to find earlier in the day, although this can vary by store. A Super Target we used to visit often put their sales out on Friday nights.

I can’t emphasize enough how having an extra freezer has saved us money. Around Thanksgiving, we found turkeys for 40 cents a pound one weekday morning. Those same turkeys were at least double that closer to the holidays. We bought two and were good for the whole holiday season in one trip. We are also able to take advantages of other deals on meat, and one $75 shopping trip kept us in ground beef and steak for over a month.

Happy shopping!