Coupons and Frugal Living - Saving at the Grocery Store

With a family of six boys, you can probably understand why we do everything we can to save money and keep our expenses down.  One of the ways that I do this is to use coupons.  And while I do not get the amazing savings that are seen on the Extreme Couponing show, I do save at least 50% on all of our grocery trips.  I also do have a stockpile similar to what is seen on the show (but just enough for my family to actually use).

Here are a few tips that I use to save money while grocery shopping: 

1. Get coupons!  They have them everywhere from the newspapers on Sunday to on-line.  I use services like Swagbucks and Mypoints to print out coupons.  My boys have also made it a game to spot coupons at the store in blinkie machines or from sample servers. I also trade coupons with some of my friends.  One of my friends has two kids, an 8 year old girl and a 1 year old boy.  She always needs diapers or baby food coupons (which I don't anymore) and I trade her for things like gillette razor coupon codes because razors are becoming a necessary commodity in our house with three of our older boys now in the shaving age!

2. Use your coupons during the Sales! To get the best deals, you want to try to combine your coupons with sales items.  I scan the weekly grocery ads for sales, and try to match them up with my coupons.  I buy multiple items when they are on sale and I have coupons for them, and then stock up on them at that time.    For example, right now our local grocery store has a certain brand of cereal on sale for $1.97.  I have several coupons for $1 off, and that store doubles coupons!  I will get the cereal for free!  Time to build my stockpile!

What coupon tips do you have?