Coupons International

When my mom visited me during this summer, we spent some time discussing the world of couponing. She absolutely loves going grocery shopping in the US and buying items that are inexpensive after sales and coupons. However, my mom expressed to me that concept of coupons or sales is non existent in Belarus. Each grocery store in my town has the same price for milk each week and the same price for every item in the store. So her way of saving money is to buy items that she needs and not necessary that she wants.

As I was thinking about my mama’s comments I realized how blessed I am to be able to reduce our grocery budget by hundreds of dollars a year because of coupons. We used to live pay check to pay check until we discovered the world of frugality. Living below our means can be challenging at times, when the media feeds us that materialism is the way to go. But the reward of saving money by living frugal and paying off the debt is much more thrilling than buying another item that collects dust.

Living frugal is a way of life for many folks around the world. Recently I became friends with Dora from Hungary and have been fascinated to learn her money saving tips. Since stores in Hungary do not accept the same types of coupons as the stores in the US, she still gets rewarded by shopping at a local store, Drogerie Markt (DM). Dora writes, “I have a plastic card for DM and after every 200 HUF, I receive 1 point. Usually I spend 20,000 HUF a month at the store. And for every 50 and 150 points I can purchase a coupon booklet or redeem points for something else. At the end of last year I was able to get for 200 points my favorite cookbook. Since I had many points, I was able to buy a lot of books and give them out for Christmas”.

I was inspired by Dora’s comment and would love to hear how do you save money for your family?