Money Saving Monday ~ Couponing- The junk food myth

Among the top-5 excuses for not couponing, people with most always choose something along the lines of “I can't get healthy food,” “You can only get junk with coupons,” or “We try and eat real food.” Now, I'll admit it, the majority of grocery coupons out there are for over-processed, sugar-filled, and downright unhealthy. But, and this is an amazing and big but: NOT ALL ARE!

This last week I planned out a Safeway trip to use my coupons, doubles, and take advantage of the Friday-specific sales. This is how it turned out:

I saved almost 50% on this purchase and paid $60 for it all. Let's go through a run-down of what I got.

Steaks. Real meat.

Cheese. 8 pounds of cheesy, dairy goodness.

Yogurt. My daughter's most favorite food on Earth, and not junk.

Potatoes. Not straight out-of-the-ground potatoes, but these packets are made from real potatoes and usually what we do is go half-and-half with the flakes and real potatoes.

Rice. Microwave rice. What are the ingredients? Water, rice, oil, seasonings.

Bananas and cauliflower. No coupons for these guys, but a couple of my daughter's favorite foods (mine too!).

Bag of salad. I usually will buy my own lettuce and stray away from the pre-packaged stuff just because it costs more, but with my coupon and double, it was free!

Chicken. A whole roast chicken in the back, I'll be trying to stretch that into four different meals. Hopefully it'll be a success and I can share it with you!

And the “junk”

Soda. I'll admit it, we like soda! But we are trying to slow our intake down and not spend nearly as much on individual cans of them, hence the 2 liters. On Friday, these were on sale for 69 cents each.

Cereals. Sugary, over-processed, blah-blah-blah, I like this stuff still!

Chocolate Chips. 8 bags of them. This should be enough to last until Christmastime when baking stuff usually goes on sale.

What am I saying? I'm not perfect! I like soda, but I still love salad and eating carrots as a snack. But I guess what I'm mostly saying is that if you're shunning couponing because you try to stray away from junk food- give it a chance! You won't get piles and piles of free stuff, but you can save money, and that's what we want to help you do!

Merry savings to all and to all some spare change,

Laura