Every day I blog about budget saving deals. I have been asked by many readers if I buy all of these deals and the answer is no. I have been doing this for a while and have most of what we need already bought. There have been weeks where I haven’t shopped at all because I needed a break and wanted to spend more time with my family.

I think that every family just has to evaluate what is important to them at different stages in life. When I was working full time, I was so thankful for instant food that I could get for free because that is what I had time to fix.

At another stage in my life, I had less than $350 a month for all expenses (phone, gas, clothes, diapers etc.) after rent and utilities. At this point I was more than thankful for anything I could get for free. I learned to live very frugally and was able to happily survive and even save enough money to eat out once a month. (This was a big deal to me.) I learned to really trust God and be thankful for all of the miracles he provided. And trust me He did and continues to provide for me every day.

Now that I am at home full time, I enjoy cooking most all of my meals from scratch. I love to cook and have more time to cook healthier food for my family. I still cook very frugally, but do try to eat healthy foods.

I still use instant foods for when I need a quick meal to bring to someone or I need to bring cupcakes somewhere, or when I need “fast food” but I don’t want to go out to eat. I just personally try to limit them for our family at this stage in our lives. These convenience foods are great for donations as well.

Every family has different goals and income. Also, everyone has different things that they are willing to cut back in. My mother hates to use the electricity and dry clothes and my mother ‘n law washes her dishes by hand. For me, I went for years without a dryer or dishwasher and I LOVE having this convenience, so I happily use them and don’t worry about the price of electricity.

I list all of the good deals so everyone can choose what is important to them. People who have no money can be very thankful for the free foods and people who have more money can get the best deals on those items. People who feel it is important to eat organically can also learn how to eat this way more frugally.

Each week, I look at the best deals and choose which ones out of all of my lists I want to get that week. I limit myself to free items, or cheap items that we need. If you can begin to stockpile things so that you can wait to buy the items at their lowest prices and never have to pay shelf price again can be a great money saver.

I had a great question from one of my budget saving readers, and I don’t think that I have addressed this before. She wanted to know how you donate your expired coupons to the military.

You can go here. There you can adopt a base. You will see little comments on the side saying “Yes, please adopt us!” They will accept coupons for military and families who are serving overseas. Once you adopt a base, you just mail off your coupons that are expired. They would like to receive coupons that are only 2 months expired even though they can be used longer than that. The reason they only want ones that are 2 months or less past their expiration date is because it does take time for them to be sorted and received.

Once you select your base, just e-mail using the link at the top right of the page with this information per their website:

Your Name
Your Mailing Address
Your e-mail address
Your Phone Number
Any organization you may represent
The name of the base being adopted

Thank you so much to the reader who asked that question. I think it is great that we can give back in a small way to those that are serving our country.

If you are looking for a better way to file those budget saving coupons, click here.

On a given trip, I may have 10 boxes of pasta, or 12 bags of rice. Another trip, I may have 9 cans of green chilis. The point is, you can buy the ingredients for your meals that week, but then, leave some money left over in your budget to buy “stock-up” items. In other words, we won’t eat 12 bags of rice this next week. BUT, the next time that I make a meal with rice, instead of having to add that to my grocery list – it’s already in my house – AND I got it at a great price for much cheaper or FREE. If I had waited to buy it when I needed it for that week’s meal plan – it would have cost me a couple of bucks. Things cyclically go on sale – so, at the beginning, you may have to buy it at full price, but as you gradually stock up using coupons combined with sales, you can save money. Now that I have stocked up on things we typically use, on average on a given grocery trip, I only pay about 20% of the retail price. So, that is the benefit of gradually buying things as they go on sale with coupons.