Do you ever find yourself wishing that you had a few more hours to do ____________ ?

Many people that I have met over the last year have wanted to save money, but I hear the same complaint, no one has enough time.  I should warn you now that you will have to adjust your thinking on this topic.  You should be thinking, I don’t have enough money to throw away. In the Savvy Shopping class we teach you Seven Secrets that you can use to save both time and money.

I asked Julie to share with our readers how much time and money she spends.  Julie is a SAHM with 3 kids (10,8,2).  Her husband works with computers and she loves to scrapbook and read in her spare time.  She volunteers in the community and at the local school.  Julie came to one of the first Savvy Shopping Classes when it was offered over a year ago.

I am so honored to get the chance to share a little with you about what I am doing to save money.  Before I became a Savvy Shopper, I cut coupons.  I remember my mother doing it, and I think I began as soon as I got out of college and started getting the paper.  When I stayed home after having my first child, I was smart enough to compare prices.

I went back to work part time for a few years.  When I decided to stay home with my third child, I realized that I was spending thousands of dollars on grocery shopping and eating out every month.  I was shocked, and so happy that I found Savvy Shopping pretty quickly. I really believe that the key to my success has been the menu planning.  I am going to give you a “run down” of what I do each week with a time estimate.

I usually begin my week on Saturday. I have the Savvy Shopping web site saved to my home page, and I check it every day.  Quite often on Saturday, there is a list of what will be in Sunday’s paper. I look over the sites they recommend to see what my family might use.  I imagine I spend 30 minutes or less on this task, though I tend to get sucked into email and Facebook and spend an hour on the computer! This is also the day that I usually have time to plan the next week or two. I glance through my freezer.  I try not to have the same meat two days in a row. Also, on the meal plan spreadsheet that I made for myself I have a space for the activities of the day or evening.  I spend about half an hour looking at my calendar and writing in the activities for the week, and then writing the corresponding meal for each day.  On Tuesdays my daughter usually has lessons and Girl Scouts.  This means that I have 45 minutes to prepare dinner and eat it.  On those days I put into my menu something I can cook during the afternoon and heat up quickly, a crock pot recipe, or something I’ve already cooked and frozen that can be reheated quickly.

Sunday after church is usually the time that I can get at the Sunday paper.  I pick out all of the ads and coupons, get some paper, and get to work.  I spend an hour looking at the ads.  I judge whether or not I think something is really a good price and check to see if I have a coupon for the item. I try to only cut coupons that I am pretty sure I will use. I give the rest to some friends so they can go through them, too. When I am finished I usually have a list of 20 items that I want to “stock up” on, the price of each item, and the store where it is located.

My shopping day tends to fall on Tuesday.  I almost always have a free morning.  I can usually get all of my shopping done in two or three hours.  I take my time in each store looking at the offers and my coupons.  Every once in a while I find something at a great price which was not advertised. If I’m in a hurry I just stick to my Sunday list and I can get in and out of all 3 or 4 stores in less than 2 hours.

There are many more things that I could do to save more money. I have not spent any time buying coupons.  I rarely get a stack from a friend. I haven’t started using “SWAG bucks”, which Savvy Shopping recommends.

One company that has really been worth my time is Grocery Coupon Network.  I get an email from them about once a day listing some coupons.  Sometimes the email has nothing that I am interested in and I just delete it, but normally there are two or three deals that really help me. I also get an email from my local grocery store every Wednesday that gives me their circular for the week.

I would have to say that I spend a minimum of 4 hours a week, and that includes my shopping time, on  Savvy Shopping.  It’s hard to judge the amount of time I spend printing coupons.  When they come to my email, I print them out.  I spend about 15 minutes at cellfire.com and shortcuts.com every two weeks putting coupons on my shopper’s card. My biggest chunks of time are my menu planning, going through the Sunday paper, and the actual time I spend in stores shopping. It is well worth the four plus hours a week.  I have cut my grocery spending in half, and my eating out budget is about one third of what it was.