I have a confession to make: I have failed at my goal this month of not to buy any meat. Earlier this month I bought some roasting chicken and shrimp. But I just couldn’t stop myself, it was a great sale and I had coupons for it.
Meat Buying: a common grocery budget buster. Before I started using coupons I only bought meat when it was on sale and this strategy worked fine with me. Since I have started using coupons I have added a couple of more options to my savings strategies.
One of the reasons I bought the meat I bought this month was because I found two meat coupons that expired at the end of this month. So I had to use them by then. Where do you find meat coupons you are probably thinking? One common source of meat coupons are winetags. They look like this:
If you take a stroll by the wine section of your grocery stores (in states where these are allowed), you might come across these winetags. There are two kinds of winetags: one require the purchase of alcohol, usually the brand sponsoring the offer, and the best ones are the ones that don’t require you to buy any alcohol. There are winetags for many things: meat, chocolate, eggs, flowers, ice cream even greeting cards. I have found that when you take a winetag to a cashier to be used they usually have to enter the coupon manually. This is particularly the case for winetags that don’t require an alcohol purchase. This is because while usually a coupon is coded correlated to the product is good for, a winetag that doesn’t require a wine purchase is coded to take money off your purchase. So, if you once come across one you will notice that it starts with a “9″ instead of a “5″ like any other manufacturer coupon. These coupons are hard to find, so I have bought some of them twice already. Just this weekend I bought some worth $20 in savings for $11. Yes, some of the savings are negated by having to buy these coupons but I am still saving money after all is said and done.
Another way to save money is by sending in for mail in rebates. These rebates are also usually found in winetags hanging on wine bottles or sometimes in tearpads. Back in November I sent in for a rebate for $10 on fresh turkey sponsored by Pepsi. Right now I am about to send out a rebate for $8 on shrimp sponsored by a wine company.
These are all strategies that take a bit of time and effort. But I think that if I have the time to read blogs I can devote five minutes to look for these types of coupons and submit forms every now and then. This is time I devote to make an impact in our budget bottom line.
For more Frugal Ideas head to Crystal’s blog
Although reading this goal again, I stated I wouldn’t buy something I already had in my freezer and what I bought I didn’t have any of.
Picture borrowed from Hotcouponworld.
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GREAT post! You gave me some new ideas. Thanks.
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Fred
If you decide that you are going meat one way that we have found to save money is the old reliable: buy in bulk.
We buy our beef in half-cow increments from a local farmer. They give us a call every 7-12 months and ask us what we need.
Even with processing fees, this makes for very cheap meat. We get all of our beef (steaks, roasts, hamburger, etc) at hamburger prices. With creative cooking you can get a lot of mileage out of this food.
One drawback is that you need to have quite a bit of cash to dedicate to this (think above 500).
But if you’d like a smaller amount of beef (and a smaller outlay of cash) consider doing this with another family or several of them.
This is a “win, win, win” sort of situation. You buy local, you help reduce the greenhouse gases caused by shipping beef around the country and you get a great price!
Thanks for reminding us if that option BBG. My husband and I did do that two years ago. We split half a cow with a coworker of his and it tooks us a whole year to use up that meat. We haven’t been able to do that again because the person we did it with first went out of business. But where we live we should be able to find another supplier. the problem is what you say: the initial outlay of cash.
I have traded for wine tag coupons for years but they are not found in our state.
I am jealous! You have Walgreens and wine tags!! Some things are just not fair! LOL
Frugal Carol
I always get a big kick out of seeing wine in the grocery store near my mom’s house in Ohio. We don’t sell wine (only wine coolers) in our groceries. Dang, I wish we did–I’d sure be on a hunt for those tags!
The way meat cost now a days you need to get the good deals when you can. I did. Besides it not like your going to eat it all at once any way.
My hubby is a butcher and it’s surprising how cheap you can get your meat if you KNOW what you’re doing. He always just buys meat on sale and gets it for cheaper than what it would cost to buy a whole or quarter of beef or whatever large amount from a processor. When you buy a side of beef you pay plenty as the hamburger costs you the same as the steaks and roasts plus the loss due to bone,etc still adds up. If that’s what you like fine but you could end up like several people I’ve talked to lately who bought a side of beef and then didn’t even like how it tasted.
vickie
all-about-meat.com