LOUISVILLE, KY. (WDRB) -- Free items at the grocery store and some items for dirt cheap -- a local blogger has found ways to save you 50% or more. It involves coupons, websites, Facebook, and sales.
Julia Young knows her way around the grocery store. When her husband lost his job, this Highland Middle School teacher was forced to find ways to save money and is now teaching people how to coupon.
So she started a website "Couponing to be Debt Free."
Click here for the link to the website.
She's getting 25,000 hits a day and is making a supplemental income from her blog. Young bought some oatmeal and says, "These ones are on sale for $1.29 and on Facebook, they have a one dollar off coupon, so I'm getting these for 29 cents."
Young says she does all the work for her readers, by matching up coupons to current sales at grocery stores, health food stores, and pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens.
She keeps her coupons organized in a plastic container. She says, "I match up to what I need. I also get a lot of coupons in mail. They go directly in here (container) or they'd be all over my house."
On a new website called Saving Star, you register your grocery card and can pick out ecoupons and the company will give you money back in $5 increments.
Click here for Saving Star website.
On this shopping trip, she was able to find all her items with coupons in about 40 minutes.
In the end, her balance was $100.36. After all her coupons, including $25 free for transferring her prescription, she paid $17.15 for all her groceries.
Young says, "Just realize everyone can do this. There are coupons available for produce and meat. It's not just processed foods."
Young says if you spend an hour a week preparing your grocery list with the coupons, you can save hundreds of dollars a year.
She says "You know it's kind of exciting when she see a bill that's $200 and you can walk out the store paying maybe $60 or $70."
Unlike Extreme Couponing shows, she doesn't hoard food or buy more than she needs. She says there's no reason to buy 80 of a certain item just because it's a good deal. She also says it's extreme to dumpster dive for coupons, as some do on the reality show.
