C) Making your List
-What ingredients do you need for the meals you planned?
-What items are needed for breakfast during the week?
-What items do you need for school lunches, or lunches taken to work?
-What snacks do you like to have on hand?
-Are there any special occasions that you need items for?
-What ingredients are you out of that need to be added to your list?
~It might be helpful to list these items in terms of “must buy” and “need soon.”
D) Setting a Budget
-I think the easiest way to set a budget for your trip is to grab your receipt (or look in your checkbook/bank statement) for your amount spent on your last trip.
-Divide the total spent by the number of days you were shopping for. For example, you spent $100 and shopped for 5 days, 100/5 = 20.
-Take that amount ($20 in my example above) and multiply that by the number of days you are shopping for this trip. For example, 10 days would be 10x20 = $200.
-Once you have your math done, take $5-$10 off of that number and make that your goal for today. In my example above, our goal would be to spend $190-$195 or less for the 10 days we are shopping for.
*While this may not seem like much, I think it is crucial to your success as a couponer to start slow and start small. If you shop weekly, and save $5-10 each time you shop, that is a savings of $20-40/month in your first month! For me, that is nearly a tank of gas.
