Hello, readers! My name is Stan, and I’m Sami’s boyfriend. I don’t have anything to share in the ‘pretty’ department, but Sami has invited me to write a guest post on one of my hobbies that’s made our limited student income a little easier to bear: couponing!

One day, I stumbled upon this video of a woman who acquired her groceries for literally pennies on the dollar, and was inspired. If she could do it, why couldn’t we? It turns out that getting your groceries for free requires a bit of a time commitment, but, it’s not too difficult to cut your grocery bill in half by following these easy steps:

The obvious
1. Buy only what you need.
2. Buy the store brand.
3. Buy only what you need.

The less obvious
1. *Follow the sales.* – Every week different stores release their sale fliers that will tip you off about items that are selling for below their normal price. Mark down the ones you like, and proceed to the next step.
2. *Follow the coupons.* – You can find the most current Stop and Shop deals paired with applicable coupons here and can text search (by pressing Control+F on a PC or Command+F on a Mac) an entire collection of printable coupons here. Print out the ones that apply to on-sale items.
3. *Stock up.* – You can save a lot of money by buying only what you need when it’s on sale and has printable coupons, but the way you’ll save the most money is by stocking up when your desired groceries are cheapest.

The time-consuming, or not-so-obvious
- There are two kinds of coupons. Store coupons (available in newspapers and on certain store websites; the store takes a hit when you use these) and manufacturer coupons (direct from the manufacturer of the product; the store gets reimbursed from the manufacturer when you use these).
- Some stores will double manufacturer coupons – check your store’s policies.
- Most stores will accept a store coupon and a manufacturer coupon for the same item – stack this with a sale for even more savings!
- You can sign up on manufacturer websites for their mailing lists, which often contain printable coupons. I recommend creating a separate email address if you’re going to do this, since it’s basically spam.
- Store and manufacturer coupons can be found in all sorts of publications, including your Sunday paper. Weeding through them is time consuming, but it’s also how the coupon lady does it!

Using the “obvious” and “less obvious” tips alone, we were able to cut our grocery budget almost in half. How much can you save? Have tips of your own? We’d love to hear it in the comments!

The last two weeks have been a little slow here at Poor & Pretty, but you can blame that on the holiday craze! I hope everyone had a wonderful Yule, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Eid, and New Year! {Did I forget anything?}

Speaking of new year, my resolution for 2010 is to be more frugal, and keep better track of my money. I have made several half-hearted attempts to do so in the past, including buying Suze Orman’s Young, Fabulous, & Broke book {an excellent handbook for anyone new to buying a car, budgeting, paying off student loans, credit card debt, etc}. Stan, my boyfriend, also introduced me to Mint.com. Mint.com is a free, secure website, recommended by Money, PC, and Kiplingers magazines, {plus others} that helps you manage and budget your money. Here are several reasons why I love Mint.com:

• All of my accounts in one place: When you sign up for Mint.com, you can give Mint access to your banking information, so that it pulls info. from all of your accounts {checking, savings, retirement, even student & car loans}. Mint uses this information to give you an overall picture of your current financial situation {your net worth}. I know it sounds scary to give some third-party website all of your financial info, and trust me, I was very skeptical at first, but they are TRUSTe certified and have a lengthy Privacy and Security Policy that puts me at ease. In fact, I encourage you to read it before signing up — remember, it’s very important to always read any privacy policy or any important document before signing or signing up for anything.

• Spending trends: After I began using Mint.com, I realized I spend waaay too much money. I would log on and say, “What??! I spent that much on food?!” or “Wow, I need to stop buying movies and clothes.” I have been much better since I started using Mint.com last year, but for the past few months I stopped tracking my Mint.com accounts and I just recently started again, because Stan & I are shopping for apartments and we both need to kick our budgets in gear. The Trends feature of Mint.com is a great way to see where you’re spending all of your money, so you can determine how to cut down. You can click on each piece of the pie chart to see each transaction {again, Mint.com pulls information from your banks}, and if you feel like a transaction has been placed in the wrong category, you can change it easily.

• Cash vs. credit card debt. By allowing Mint.com access to your credit card account, you can see, plain and simple, your credit card debt to cash ratio, as well as your net income minus your spending. I am not happy with mine.
• Financial fitness & monthly tasks: Mint.com also assesses how financially fit you are, according to how many accounts you own, what your assets are, your credit to debt ratio, your spending habits, loans, etc. I have a score of 66%, which is not an acceptable grade for me. I always get A’s and B’s! {Except in Bio, but it was a miracle I got a C+!!} Mint.com also gives you homework: three tasks that you really should try to do that month to be more financially fit. I’ve already accomplished one of my January tasks :)
• Ways to save: Another good reason to give Mint.com access to your account information is that it can help you find credit cards with lower interest rates, savings accounts with higher interest rates, etc. Because every penny counts!
• There’s an app for that: And, of course, there is a Mint.com app for iPhones. It allows you to turn on push notifications to notify you when your checking account has slipped below a certain dollar amount, or if you’ve spent more than you usually do on Shopping, etc. If you don’t have an iPhone, you can also get e-mail and/or text notifications.

Please, please, please, as a Poor & Pretty reader, check out Mint.com. I promise you that I am in no way being paid to give you this raving review of their website. I just need help budgeting like everyone else on this earth, and Mint.com is the easiest way to do it. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that Mint.com is usually a day or two behind in collecting data from your accounts. After all, it has to wait until a transaction clears in your bank before it can list it on your overview. Still, that shouldn’t discourage you from signing up and taking charge of your financial situation, especially if you’re a fellow Poor & Pretty.

Here’s to a financially fit 2010!