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!