Coupons
While most coupons are for frozen produce, there are sometimes coupons for fresh products, especially brand names. Frozen produce is also a great thing to have on hand since it doesn’t have a short shelf life or delicate nature. Many people only use frozen produce such as veggies. During the winter especially up north where I live we simply wouldn’t be able to live without it.

Markdowns
Most grocers markdown items about to be past their use-by date or that were bruised in transit, just a bit past the ripe stage, etc. Early in the day is your best bet to grab these. They are normally marked down by the pound or the piece. Buy only what you will use/freeze in the next day or two. More than that and even though its only a buck or two it will be wasted, as there is nothing but the compost heap once its slimy and moldy. Sometimes these will be on a bagged variety of produce that was over-purchased and close to the use by date. I recently bought a bag of Paula Deen broccoli with herbed butter sauce for .79, versus the 1.99 the store flyer had it advertised for. They expired at the end of the week and the store had tons of them they needed to clear out. For .79 I got a steam in bag side that had beautiful broccoli crowns. It tasted wonderful.

Winetags/Store Coupons
Winetags often come in a $$ off produce variety. While they may require a minimum purchase it is often only more than the discount, such that a $1 off produce requires a purchase of 1.01 or more. I can live with that. Store coupons often give a discount on the store brand produce, such as a bag of potatoes, baby carrots, or minimum amount of apples. So long as the store brand is as good or better than the other choices, I see no reason why I shouldn’t enjoy an extra discount on my apples. Some stores also put out coupons for a flat discount on anything from the produce department. Which means I can buy a clove of garlic, and apple, an onion and a head of lettuce and get $$ off the entire purchase.

MIRs
The sibling of the WT, the MIR often includes produce that accompanies a holiday meal (cabbage/carrots/potatoes for St. Patrick’s Day for instance), a specific type such as fruit or bagged salad mix, or a general produce purchase. They can be as little as a buck or two or a larger purchase. As far as I am concerned it never hurts to save a bit on a budget item that can be hard to save on. If I will save more than the price of a stamp I generally send the rebate out.

In Season Produce
Whatever is in season is what is on sale. This is the first week vidalia onions have been available, and they are .69/lb at a local market. While they normally stay under $1/lb it is a nice discount. Being a root veggie I bought a bag full of nice unblemished ones to tuck in the root veggie box with the taters (a big 10lb bag of ME taters I bought for 5.97) to hold me over til the next decent sale. Buying a box of strawberries in December could cost you three times the cost of in season. If you can deal with frozen fruit in the winter, buy extra and free for later. Wonder why you have a block of fruit when the stuff at the store is separated? Freeze individual pieces on a rimmed baking sheet, then bag. Take out what you want to use and leave the rest in the freezer.

Farmstands/Farmers Market
If you live in the country or near it, you pass these all the time. Maybe its a nice building at the edge of the fields, or just bushels out the back of a truck. Buying local produce means it is fresh picked and helping out the people in your community, not those in Chile (not that the Chileans don’t need to make a decent living as well). You will likely need cash (although bigger stands are moving toward taking credit or debit payments), but you will get a bargain at most compared to the local grocer. Farmers Markets are surging in popularity as well, with many towns having one at a downtown location with various farmers and vendors selling their wares. You may even be able to pick up regional goods such as cheese, milk, eggs and meat along with your produce.

CSA
Community Supported Agriculture is when a farm sells shares of their harvest. For your “share” you receive a portion of everything grown during the season. At a bigger farm this can range from eggs to veggies to fruit to honey to wildflowers. Some require you to put in a bit of effort, while others just require you to pay and pickup or they might even deliver. With the cost of farming raising and pushes toward growing only what the government subsidizes buying CSA shares helps your local farmers to continue to do what they love.

Grow Your Own
I know, I know. You don’t have time, space, etc. But even one pot of tomatoes will make a HUGE impact on your budget. Not to mention the taste of a homegrown and fresh picked tomato over the ones from the store. And it saves running to the farmstand or market just to make a BLT. Choose varieties that are good for where you live and the light you get where you plant. Container gardening is surging, so even if you live in a tiny apartment you can manage to grow something. Community gardens or garden share programs are also out there. Not sure what to plant? Think about what you eat. There is no point in growing tomatoes by the dozen if you won’t eat them. Only need a few seeds instead of the 100 in the packet? Get a group of friends together, make a list of what to grow and divide the costs. You can also find bundled packs of seeds at the store or online. You can even request a sample pack from places such as Hollar Seeds Pay attention to spacing details as too close plants will under-perform. If you end up with too many eggplants see if a neighbor can use some, or a friend wants to trade for some of the ton of tomatoes she grew. You can also donate your extra produce to a food pantry.

Hopefully this will give you an idea on how to pare down your produce bills. Try a few of them out and see if you can’t make an impact on your budget.
*tomato heart by Piku of SXC

The good news is I only didn’t buy a couple rebates worth of stuff (firelogs and a produce item more than $3). Which means I have around $100 more in rebates to send out for, which will bring my yearly total to around $400. Not too bad for missing a bunch of them and not buying every rebate since we don’t really need some stuff.

I told Tim (my husband) he can keep any I send in his name to buy a light saber part. So he will be happy when checks start coming in as well.

Let this be a lesson if you think rebates are just as negligible as coupons. Most of the rebates I have now are for meat, produce, cheese and holiday decorations (lights, bows, cards). Which are things we don’t always have coupons for which are now paying for themselves. Not a bad deal when you think about it.

Take for instance the fact that Maine does not allow alcohol companies to require we purchase their product for a rebate. Which means if Coors or Bud or even Sutter Home offers a rebate good in Maine I can not buy the alcohol and still get my cash off food or giftcards or whatever. Although not a heavy drinker I do allow such rebates to influence my few purchases for gifts or to fertilize my lawn.

We also have some of the best seafood prices in the country which means my seafood winetags and rebates go further and buy fresher seafood than you might get in say South Dakota.

On the other side of the coin is the stuff I have to purchase in Maine that cost more. Such as drinks in a bottle or can. I have some nice bottled water coupons, but they will at best eat half the bottle deposit for the water purchased. Which means I will buy store brand instead of our preferred brand (after all Poland Spring is what it means to be from Maine, right?) to try and come out ahead. Although then I have to try to remember to return the bottles instead of just taking them to the transfer station. we still have a case of Smirnoff Ice from this summer we haven’t gotten around to returning yet.

I don’t mind the tax as much as the bottle deposits. I suppose if you are buying alot it adds up, but it never seems to do me in compared to the savings. I mean if I get $100 worth of stuff for $10 plus tax I can’t complain much.

In the end I am a proud citizen and enjoy the benefits of living here. Now if I could just get me some tourist repellent for the summers I’d be all set.

Along with the coupons expiring the deadline for many rebates is upon us. Which means lots of last minute buying to round out amounts and get them in the mail next week when USPS is back up and running. The good thing is many of the rebates will include stuff on sale or clearance after the holidays including meat, decorations, and all sorts of other food items.

I have seperated out almost $150 worth of rebates I still need to do, and I know I am still looking for some I do not have. Some are being sent in my husband’s name which will go towards his Crystal Focus fund (light saber stuff) so I will be sharing that $150. well worth it though.

So go through all those rebates you’ve been meaning to do, the try-me-free items, beer rebates, winetag rebates and make a list. Check it twice and you can find out if your haul will be naughty or nice.

It seems everywhere I turn there are rude ignorant people out to make me feel bad for shopping and finding and using coupons. Which only goes about creating hard feelings and showing new couponers that they cannot trust anyone because you never know when someone might go from friendly to jealous and stab you in the back.

A popular forum listed in the glossary here has banned me for being “rude” without any prior warning. Which leads me to believe they just don’t like me. I’ve been a mod and an admin on enough large forums to know you don’t EVER deviate from your own rules unless someone tries to hack your forum. Which I clearly did not. And since no clear example of me being mean could be furnished it smelled of simple favoritism. Just because you run a forum/blog/website doesn’t mean you are above the law. It just means you have to continually ban people who see you for the greedy, self serving brats you are. Obviously you do this only for monetary gain and the better chance to get the coupons you want, since people are too blind to realize that people trade with mods/admins hoping to gain favoritism. Sickening.

Another forum has a member with a signature line about how it must be Smash&grabbing if you have more winetag than you can possibly use instead of leaving enough for others. When I contacted her to mention I make one to two dozen or more trips to almost a dozen different stores and thus have alot more coupons than some people, she still said obviously since I was hoarding winetags I was greedy. Now if I was hoarding peanut butter I was not. Contradictory or what? My mention that several members wouldn’t find me greedy as I sent them large envelopes of winetags, without asking a thing in return, was ignored since clearly it did not support her theory.

Something in the chase, the adrenaline rush, the missed deal seems to bring out the rabid fangs of jealousy. That most couponers are women and thus more emotional and hormonal doesn’t seem to help. We tend to get so caught up in trying to find the good deal we forget to not turn on each other without provocation. Instead we start calling each other greedy and slamming people for asking that they get what they are supposed to and tell them they should “fly under the radar” at all costs. Which is just another euphemism for bending over and taking it and praying you can fix it other ways. Which makes you feel victimized and weak, not empowered for taking your finances into your own hands.

My own feelings are that you have to look at yourself in the mirror and sleep with yourself at night. If you take every winetag and tearpad you see and sell them on Ebay, I can’t say I agree with you, but you aren’t going to stop because I tell you to. Calling you greedy isn’t going to make it different either, and a newbie is going to see right through to the jealous rage causing the issue.

I have always been blessed to find plenty of coupons and deals. I do go out of my way at times to do so, and thus work hard to get what I have. Yes winetags are hard to find in some areas of Maine, but I drive 30mins out of my way to search in York, another 30mins to search in Wells. If I find what I want I’ve earned it. If you don’t want to search in new places you probably won’t find them. Thats the trade off. I trade my winetags with others, and find more often than not the person whining about not finding any also wants every last winetag I have but not to trade their own winetags in return. Which tells me they are very much greedy and jealous and just mean spirited. Karma clearly isn’t going to reward such behavior.

So go forth, search and be frugal. But remember to use your own discretion so that you don’t have doubts as to whether you’ve been greedy and mean about it.