Coupons, favado and Ibotta .

Coupons got a bad rap when the extreme couponing  show came on.  In case you haven't figured it out, that show is scripted and those deals don't really happen in real life.     Most grocery stores now do not take dozens of coupons for the same thing,    Good thing, most of us dont need  85 bottles of hot sauce.    lol

Coupons are a good way to further reduce your cost of food. You can also at times get personal hygiene products for free.
It doesn't have to take 40 hours a week to clip coupons. I buy a Sunday paper the Saturday  before at the dollar tree and pull the Fred Meyer ad and the coupon inserts. P &G comes out the first weekend  of the month. Also, we get other inserts in the mail about Wednesday or Thursday. I put the inserts in a file folder  sorted by month.   It really helps of you write the date on the outside of the insert.

Once a month at the first of the month, I download coupons that I will use from coupons.com.
I file them in a binder.  

When I find a good buy for something on my list, I look at favado to see if there is a coupon  for it.
If don't have the insert or coupon on my binder, I download the coupon, or go to the insert  and clip it. This takes minutes, instead of clipping all the coupons and filing them so you can pull them when they expire.    Minimal time for maximum benefit.   Watch for coupons everywhere.    Today, I found a coupon for a dollar off of two cans of green chillies.   It made two cans of,chillies thirty five cents each.   That was over a two dollar savings, depending on where you shop.   All those two dollars add up.  

Ibotta so a program ap that I downloaded.   I check it after I get home from the store.   You listen to a shirt commercial while putting away the groceries, and snap a pic of the barcode and your sales slip and they put money in your account.    You can get rebate money for many fresh perishables that almost never have a coupon .  I am saving for an Amazon credit so I can use it for printer ink or toilet paper.

I can average five or six dollars a week using coupons.    I don't think I spend more than five  minutes a week getting them.  That's sixty dollars  an hour for my time.   I have never made sixty dollars an hour tax free!  

There are a lot of naysayers out there.   I've heard it all.   It's just for processed food is one of them--
Most of us use things like yogurt, butter, ice cream, cereal and a whole lot more that is not a hambirger meal box or a box of Mac and cheese.   Talk about processed foods!

   There are a lot of fat free, sugar free, gluten free, taste free foods out there.   Most of them have something else added to them that maybe worse than what you are trying to eliminate on the first place.

   My attitude is to eat basic foods, eat in moderation, use the USDA food pyramid and stick as close to real food as is realistically possible.  Tongue in  cheek news flash.... You are not going to spend six dollars a gallon for milk, and eight dollars a pound for quinoa and feed your family on four dollars a day!  Reality check!

I looked at the butter substitute today.   Ingredients are to be listed in order of volume.    The first thing on the list was water, the next thing was palm oil.    Palm oil is a trans fat.   My nutritionalist told me that I was better off using a skim of butter on my toast than to be using a fake butter.    Notice I didn't say a pat of butter!  

In my opinion, there is too much hype, controversy, and opinions out there to not take them all with a grain of salt.

I do know these things to be true:

1)  You can't take a entire food group out of your diet and not find out from someone who knows what they are doing ( not Aunt Martha) LOL. What you need to replace it with to give you a balanced diet.
2) Many things that weren't good for you a few years ago, are good for you now.   Time has a way of changing people's minds.

Now, I am a firm believer that too much salt, sugar, and  fat is bad for you.    I also believe you can rinse canned food, defat  ground meats, avoid processed meals and some take out meals that are sugar loaded, not serve desert every night, avoid things like potato chips and other salt and sugar loaded snacks.   Oven roast your fries instead of frying  your food.   You can do a lot without becoming an extremist .

Jane