Using coupons to help food banks

Before I started blogging I was a wanna-be crazy couponer. (Although, if you ask my husband he’ll tell you that I hit a home run on the crazy part.)

My all-time couponing hero is Amber Bustanoby. She’s a Lynnwood resident and author of Coupon Connections. Once I started my blog Teaching My Baby to Read, I ran out of time for coupons. But that doesn’t mean I’ve lost all my skills.

So when I saw that some local kids were going to be coming door to door to collect bags for the Edmonds Food Bank, I decided to go for it. Our food budget is flexible enough that giving $10 worth of food isn’t going to hurt. I wanted to make sure that ten bucks went as far as possible.

Since I haven’t been extreme couponing in a while, I don’t have a huge stockpile of coupons stacked up. But lucky for me, the Fred Meyer circular had just come in the mail. They featured some really awesome coupons that must be loss leaders for Kroger. Ten packs of Ramen for fifty cents? Wow!

That’s how I was able to purchase $19.83 worth of groceries for $10.15. Yeah, Amber could probably have filled up that bag for free. But I still feel pretty good about doubling my contribution.

The really cool thing was that the grandpa in front of me in line at Fred Meyer was buying Ramen for the food bank too. He had his coupon clipped out and everything.