Episode 77: Couponing with Freda Graves-Waller

Freda Graves-Waller

Autumn Carter: This is episode 77.

 Welcome to Wellness in Every Season, the podcast where we explore the rich tapestry of motherhood and wellness in all its forms. I'm your host, Autumn Carter, a certified life coach and parenting coach dedicated to empowering mothers to rediscover their identity beyond motherhood.

Find balance amidst chaos. Strengthen relationships and pursue their dreams. My goal is to help mothers thrive both as individuals and as parents. Hello today, we are talking to Frieda. Graves' Waller about couponing. If you feel like your family's depleting your budget, then this episode is for you. We are talking all about couponing with groceries, with everything home-related. Let's help you stretch those dollars.

Autumn Carter: Today, I have with me the grocery fairy godmother. Isn't that such a great name? Freda Graves Waller, and she has a passion for turning grocery shopping into a pocket friendly adventure. Nowadays, we need this. So much of our budget, we have four kids, goes to grocery shopping and it is painful right now.

I am very grateful you're on. For my sake and for everybody else's.

Can you tell us about your journey and we can navigate into how it applies to today.

Freda Graves-Waller: I got started with grocery shopping as a whole late 2012, and it all started from the show Extreme Couponing, and I saw the show and. It just struck a nerve with me and I'm like, there's no way they're buying all these groceries for mere pennies. So I had to prove that this just could not be true. And what I found was that what they were showing, for the most part, was true.

So I learned how to grocery shop and beat the grocery stores. at their own game.

Autumn Carter: How nutritionally sound are you able to be for your family? I know that a lot of the coupons are for more foods with preservatives that aren't quite as healthy.

Freda Graves-Waller: Yes, the coupon game has really changed since 2012 and you're not gonna find a whole lot of grocery coupons.

Right now you're gonna find more of your household type coupons. But if you know how to shop the sales, work the sales to your advantage, is where you're going to start to see some of the savings and use those savings to build a stockpile. That is where you're going to get the most savings on groceries.

Autumn Carter: You're a stay at home mom. You have four girls, your grandma to three kids. Tell us about this journey.

Freda Graves-Waller: Yes. I am a mother of four girls. I have three adult children. I have a 10 year old and I have three grandkids. It has just been a real rollercoaster doing it all over again, starting over raising kids from the beginning.

It's been a real learning experience. And the things that I thought that I believed in with the older children aren't things that I believe in with the youngest one. I've just learned a lot about me and what I feel to be good or to be true for how I want to raise her.

Autumn Carter: have evolved and maybe society's changed a bit too?

Freda Graves-Waller: Society has definitely changed and I have definitely evolved.

Autumn Carter: It's really important to recognize that. I've noticed that within myself and then coaching people. There's so many times where we'll say something that used to be true for us and it's no longer a belief that we hold or it's no longer part of our personality.

You live on one income, and you are able to give 500 a month. You were able to take a vacation when you started couponing. Tell us about this.

Freda Graves-Waller: When I first started couponing, we were a family of four. And we were spending about 1, 000 a month on groceries. And that was because I had no clue, really, how to grocery shop.

But once I learned how to coupon and grocery shop, I learned how to create a strategic grocery list that was going to be beneficial for me that wasn't just full of the preservatives and the things that just aren't good for you.

So I learned how to create a list that would be beneficial for us. I was able to cut our grocery bill down from a thousand dollars to five. And within about three months, I was able to save about 1, 500 and we went on our very first family vacation. To Slitterbine.

Autumn Carter: Yes, it was fun. Tell us about some of the tricks that you have for this.

It sounds like meal planning is a part of it.

Freda Graves-Waller: Yes. Meal planning is a big part. Stockpiling is a big part and shopping to sales. These three things together are going to really help you cut that grocery bill in half. If you can create what I like to call a price book, you can monitor What the grocery store say is a sale and use your price book to monitor whether or not that is truly a sale and whether that is something that you should be buying at that moment, or should you wait until a later date or a later sales event to purchase that item?

Once you know that, then you can take your meal plan from what you already have at home. And then use what's on sale to fill in those little open gaps that you may have.

Autumn Carter: Okay, that makes sense.

How much space do you need for stockpiling? Because I'm thinking back to Queen Pins on Netflix. I don't know if you've seen it.

The amount of space that it took to stockpile was Astounding, and my grandmother, I grew up with her, was a hoarder. So I'm envisioning this, but I assume that's not to that extent.

Freda Graves-Waller: The space that you're going to need is going to be determined by how big you want your stockpile to be.

You don't have to have a stockpile that takes up your whole garage or your whole basement or what have you. I don't have a garage or a basement, so my space is very limited. So I have a spare closet and I have my master bedroom closet and my pantry That is the only spaces that i'm working with So i'm only stockpiling what I know that I can fit into my pantry or into those spaces And I am monitoring what i'm putting in And what i'm taking out of my stockpile to make sure that everything That I do have is being used in a timely fashion, so nothing goes to waste.

Autumn Carter: Okay, so it sounds like you definitely have an organization here and some kind of system to keep track of what's going where. Do you have an extra fridge or an extra freezer?

Freda Graves-Waller: Yes, I have an extra fridge and I have an extra freezer as well. I use my freezer to stockpile meat whenever the meat goes on sale or vegetables that I can put in my freezer.

And my extra refrigerator, I use the freezer part as well as just an additional space for what I can't get inside of my stand up freezer.

Autumn Carter: Tell us a little bit about your journey with your wins and your losses with learning how to make a system and you're trying to prove the show wrong.

Freda Graves-Waller: just couldn't believe that was something that was even true. I had never even heard of couponing before. I watched Extreme Couponing Show and I called my mom and my mom showed me a little bit of what she knew and I just went from there and it was a lot of trial and error.

 In the beginning it was like, everything's on sale, buy everything. And then I have a house full of all these things that I'm realizing I don't need or that I'm never going to use. One big lesson that I really learned early on. Was when you're couponing and stockpiling, you're wanting to make sure that you're buying things that you're going to use on a regular basis in your home.

That was one thing. And then another thing that I learned was that you can't always believe What's on sale like the price that they tell you I had to learn that the hard way as well Because the grocery stores will tell you oh we have a 10 for 10 And then you look at the items you're like, oh, yes tuna fish is great.

I need that. It's A dollar. But if you have a price book and you can see like on every day, it may be 89 cents. They raised the price a little bit to make it fit within that 10. So I had to learn that I needed to monitor the sales.

Autumn Carter: I

t sounds like there's a lot of front end work, correct?

Making the price book. And then the thought that comes to me is my dad owned his own business growing up. So there's the time commitment, like how much is there? If you're driving a certain distance, is it still a sale, depending on how much gas you're using? Can you talk about that? How you determine whether going to the store is worth it for this item?

And maybe bundling the grocery shopping trip so that the stores that you're going to are near each other.

Freda Graves-Waller: For me, I have to commute. I live 30 miles outside of any major city. I live in the country. And so when I go to the shop once a week, I make sure that I have a very strategic list.

i'm not going to the grocery store multiple times during the week and when I go I have checked those prices Yes, there is some legwork up front I may spend 10 to 15 minutes because everything is together just checking this information I can price compare to walmart and see They have posted Walmart for a dollar 29, but it's on sale for 49 cents It's definitely worth it to put together a nice grocery list and get all the items that are on sale at that price.

I guess you just have to make that judgment call. What's really worth it to you, especially if you have to make that commute. Once a week, and that you're going to at least just one grocery store. I don't shop at tons of different grocery stores, I just shop at one.

And that is how I'm really able to stay on top of what's on sale, if it's a really good deal, and is it worth my time and effort to make that commute.

Autumn Carter: That makes so much sense because my mom would go to the grocery store several times a week and just buy whatever. So that's what I did when I first moved out on my own.

It was very expensive. Lesson. I lived with my mom until I was 12, then I moved in with my dad, and he lived with his parents. And my grandmother's version was going to the base, the commissary. We lived in a bigger town, there was a bigger base there, so the commissary was a pretty good size.

But Sarah Lee style, lots of preservatives and she would get all of the things that were marked down. It was one of those standup shops that was on a totally different side of town. Basically an outlet store for something like Sarah Lee, but it was a different brand. And then she would go to a lot of different grocery stores, depending on the sales.

And for me, that never made sense to me. I'd rather just go to one store. And hopefully a store that can price match. So it sounds like the coupons that you were looking for are the ones that maybe, not always the store is putting on sale, but the brand is putting on sale. Is that correct? Yes.

Freda Graves-Waller: Correct. And by couponing, I've also learned that I'm not really brand loyal to a specific brand.

So I can buy maybe Prego this week and Ragu next week. for the most part, everything else is not geared to a specific brand. I'm pretty open in that area. And that also opens up the door to even more savings.

Autumn Carter: And couponing, you sometimes find deals that are cheaper than the store brand, correct?

Freda Graves-Waller: Correct. And so you will typically find, especially if you're paying attention to the sales, they can have their store brand for maybe 82 cents. That's the everyday price. But the name brand could be on sale for 42 cents. So you can definitely get the name brand for cheaper than you can get the no name brand.

Autumn Carter: That sounds very helpful for somebody who is stuck on a certain brand. My yogurt's Is actually the store brand of the grocery store we like to shop at. Works for me. That's really helpful to know that when certain things are on sale, if it's the brand that you are really heart set on, you can still get a sale that way.

With my grandma, like I said, she was a hoarder. She would stockpile a ton. And it was a little trail that you had to get around. We did not invite friends over. I'll just put it that way. So Queen Pins was reminiscences of that enough for me that I was like, I can't watch this anymore. But it was interesting idea.

Yeah. Extreme couponing. And tell us, for those who haven't watched it, they're shopping the sales with coupons, what else are they doing?

Freda Graves-Waller: They're shopping the sales, they're using coupons, and they're buying those items in multiple. So if it's on sale for 99 cents, back then you could use however many coupons you had, and take advantage of that sale with those coupons.

And so when you have a coupon, you want to make sure that you're not using that coupon on a full price item. You want to use a coupon on a sale item to get a deeper discount.

Autumn Carter: And Queen Pins is not a real show. It has, what is her name? I can picture her face. I can't remember her name. Anyway, it's a comedy.

I never got to like the funny part of it. I got to the triggering part of it. So she is talking about that, but basically what they are doing is they are making a profit on selling the coupons to other people.

You do a, you shop at one store. You are further away, so it is a bit of a drive, so you make sure it's once a week. It sounds like you probably have an idea of when things typically go on sale, right? Yes,

Freda Graves-Waller: so there is a rhyme or a rhythm To the grocery store now every grocery store is a little bit different but most stores typically put something on sale Somewhere between six and twelve weeks So everything in that store is going to go on sale somewhere in between that six and twelve weeks So if it was on sale today, it'll go back on sale somewhere between six and twelve weeks Some things go on sale a little bit more regular so things like cereal you will notice will go on sale way more frequently But nonetheless, the pasta sauce is still going to go on sale.

Say you didn't catch it this week and you really didn't need it, but when it comes back on sale again in maybe six weeks, you would want to take advantage of that sale and pick up a jar or two.

Autumn Carter: Okay.

Freda Graves-Waller: Yes You definitely don't want to create a list and say okay This is everything I need and i'm gonna go buy two or three of these items You definitely want to when you're building your stockpile. You want to monitor those sales You want to look in your sales ad to see what's on sale that you need and then you slowly buy one or two extra that's on sale that week.

And you can slowly build your stockpile to however big or small you want your stockpile to be.

Autumn Carter: It sounds like this is something that a working mom or a single mom can do based off the time.

Freda Graves-Waller: It's definitely something that a working mom or a busy mom can definitely do. Now, there is a little bit of leg work in the beginning to get this set up, but once you have it set up, it's going to take you 10, maybe 15 minutes max.

To look at your information, do your price match, put your grocery list together, and then you're really ready to go grocery shopping.

Autumn Carter: sounds like it's starting it and then making it a habit and then after it becomes more natural.

Freda Graves-Waller: Yes, after that it's definitely more natural because I like to pick a day off out of the week.

For me, it's Sunday. So every Sunday I sit down, I create my meal plan, I look at the sales ad to see what's coming up in the upcoming week, and then I write out my grocery list, and then I check my Price book to see like what is on sale and if this is really a good deal or not.

And before I go to the store, I pretty much have an idea of what I want to spend because in my price book, not only do I have the regular price, but I also have. The sale price. So say that I wanted Miracle Whip or mayonnaise this week, but it wasn't on sale. I know that for 4. 99, I can get a jar of mayonnaise.

So I'll know when I get to the register, okay, I'm supposed to spend 60 or a hundred dollars or whatever it's going to be. Before I even hit checkout. So I'm also calculating in the store, just to tally up, to make sure that I'm still staying within my budget.

Because having a budget is really important. If you don't have a budget, then you'll always spend more and more. We definitely want to have a budget in place so that you have something to guide you to what you need to stick to. And yes, it's okay to go over. Your budget, a couple of dollars, but you want to try to stick to that budget as close to possible.

Autumn Carter: This is the part where I've gotten stuck is I thought I needed to make my meal plan based off of what was on sale.

Freda Graves-Waller: No, basically you want to make your meal plan based on what you already have at home first. You want to check your freezer and your fridge and your pantry to see what all you have in there to create meals.

you want to definitely start with what's at home first.

And then work your way out.

Autumn Carter: Yeah. And that totally makes sense. Especially buying the little bit extra, not just for the savings, but as we know from surviving the pandemic, when there were food shortages, it was really helpful if you had a little bit extra in your pantry. So that is super helpful.

Freda Graves-Waller: I know we've talked a lot about actually grocery shopping and the strategies or whatever to help you but there's one thing we really didn't touch bases on and that was rebate apps that is another part of helping you save a little extra on the back end. And so with rebate apps, my favorite one is Fetch.

So basically all you're going to do is go to the grocery store, shop like you normally shop. When you get home, take that receipt, scan it, and you're going to earn points. And then once you get so many points, you can cash out and get a gift certificate to say like Amazon or wherever. I'm pretty much an Amazon girl, so I collect the points and an Amazon gift card.

All right. trying to save up to the end of the year so I can do my Christmas shopping with that at the end of the year. So that's a huge help as well because I'm not having to come out of pocket for Christmas because I've used that app to save up from grocery shopping to earn those points.

So now I can do my Christmas shopping. With this free gift card that I earned

Autumn Carter: tell us for those that are listening how do we join your email list? And how do we connect with you?

Freda Graves-Waller: I am a facebook girl So if you want to get free trainings and ask me questions and things like that I highly recommend you join my facebook group.

It is grocery savings hub on Facebook.

Autumn Carter: so much for being on today. This is very valuable for me, and I know it will be for many others, especially as it feels like the grocery bill is just climbing up and up, and I don't feel like we're eating that much more.

You're so welcome.

Freda Graves-Waller: Thank you.

Autumn Carter: Thank you for joining me on Wellness in Every Season. Remember to take time to relax, heal, and be present. Next week, I will be talking about misalignment and how it can cause external factors.

thanks for tuning into this week's episode. I am your host Autumn Carter, a certified life coach and parenting coach Dedicated to empowering mothers to rediscover their identity beyond motherhood, find balance amidst chaos, Strengthen relationships, and pursue their dreams.

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