There are some great conversations taking place in the comments section, so please hop over and share your input or ask questions. For example, based on Stephanie & Melissa of Serendipity is Sweet’s input, I’ll be posting some tips for saving money on specialty foods (such as halal foods) and how to transform cranky I-hate-grocery-shopping to grocery-shopping-spree-helpers!

How the Stop & Shop Back-to-School Event works:

General Mills and Stop & Shop are teaming up to give families a great way to stock up and save, as they gear up for back to school. Here’s why shoppers should shop at Stop & Shop’s big Back to School Event.

1. Great sale pricing on the participating General Mills brands:
   Cheerios, Lucky Charms, Reeses Puffs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cookie Crisp Sprinkles, Cookie Crisp, Fruit Snacks, Old El Paso Dinner Kits, Pillsbury Strudel, Pillsbury Scrambles, Green Giant Boxed Vegetables, Yoplait Yo-Plus Multi-Pack, Fiber One Yogurt Multi-Pack, Pillsbury Refrigerated Cookies, Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, Pillsbury Sweet Rolls and Yoplait Delights
2. Additional savings for you or your school, depending on which Stop & Shop location you shop
   If your Stop & Shop store sells gas

• Buy four (4) participating General Mills items and you’ll automatically earn 100 points on your Stop & Shop card
• For every 100 points earned, you’ll save 10¢ per gallon of gas (Please note: Total discount cannot exceed price per gallon)
• Just swipe your Stop & Shop Card at the pump to redeem your Gas Rewards

If your Stop & Shop store doesn’t sell gas

• For those Stop & Shop locations without gas stations, don’t worry – you’re not left out of the savings – if you buy five (5) participating General Mills products, you will receive 20 Bonus Box Tops for your school

Win a $10 Stop & Shop Gift Certificate

MyBlogSpark & General Mills is offering one of our readers a $10 Stop & Shop gift card, that does not expire today . Please comment below with your favorite General Mills products and why. UPDATE: MyBlogSpark graciously extended this offer until Wednesday, September 16, 2009 as 12 midnight. So, please comment below.

Extra Coupon Savings on General Mills brand products

• Printable coupons: General Mills cereals, Yoplait, Old ElPaso & Pillsbury
• Circular coupons: General Mills, Fiber One

1.Kitchen Kids Cookbook

2. Bruise Relief Cream

3. Free Fiber One Samples + $5 coupons

4. Horse Safety First – How to Become Your Horse’s Best Friend – With Bob Jeffreys and Suzanne Sheppard. With 11 chapters ranging from Horse Psychology to Rules for the Trail and Arena, this 50-minute DVD will help you learn the basics of being safe around your horse.

5. Free Handsoap by Flic Spa Salon (offer is valid while supplies last)

[WARNING: This coupon saving series is made for Coupon Newbies, like me. So, if you are a Strategic Shopping Expert, please share your tips and advice. I'm just starting to learn the lingo and habits to Intelligent Shopping.]

• There are the obvious places that coupons hang out, but you may not be aware of some other places you can get coupons. So, compiled are some hidden treasures below. The most likely place to find money saving coupons is the Sunday newspaper. On Sunday, the newspaper is full of store circulars and coupons for products you use all the time and new items that you can try for next to nothing. This is the first place that everyone looks.
• Manufacturers also offer printable coupons online. These coupons have barcodes and can be printed off of your printer and used in the store they pertain to. Most people don’t think about these coupons but they save you lots of money. For example, you can find Printable Grocery Coupons at Coupon Mom.com, and Ocean State Job Lot has great exclusive internet coupons each week.
• Have you ever received emails with links to recipes like Betty Crocker? You can unsubscribe to these emails whenever you like, but give them a try. (Registration required). Not only do you find interesting recipes but also offers for coupons. Simply agree to receive new offers and your emailbox will be full of coupons for cake mix, pancake mix, free trial size lotions, and other toiletries. I use one email address just for these offers. One daughter enjoys screening it for us daily .
• Printable coupons are also available on websites. Try sites like www.coolsavings.com and www.allprintablecoupons.com. You can search by category or brand name to find coupons that fit your needs. Click on the coupons that you want and then print them out.
• If you belong to survey sites, you know that you can make extra money by offering your opinion. Some survey sites also offer points for taking advantage of their offers through links on their sites. On MyPoints.com, one of these discount links leads to printable grocery coupons. Every coupon that you redeem at the store earns you points towards gift card rewards when you reach a certain points level.
• Don’t neglect all those magazines you buy. While you are reading the articles and looking at the pictures, take a glance over at the advertising pages. Many advertisers include a coupon along with their ads to entice customers to buy their product. Some types of coupons offered can include, Buy One, Get One Free or up to $1.00 or more off of a starter pack for air freshener or a new mechanical mop. If you ignore them, you’ll be throwing away money.
• Every few months, a new yellow pages-type phone directory is usually thrown at your driveway. While we use the books for our bonfires, I sieve through all the back pages usually labeled “coupon section”.
• Look for displays at the front of your grocery store. Some grocery stores have coupon bins and bulletin boards where customers can drop off coupons that they don’t need in case someone else can use them. There could be a coupon worth using in there if you take the time to look.

Coupons are a valuable asset to Strategic Shoppers trying to save money on all of their goods and services.So, get in the habit of looking for a coupon deal everywhere so you don’t miss out on great savings.

[I find myself saying exactly what the comic says to my girls quite a bit lately ]

In my attempt to capitalize on coupons, I’ve been conducting my research on how to live a more frugal (and natural) way of life. Below are some tips I gathered from some colleagues and friends.

So, for starters–yes, coupons do save us money.

But, we have to use them in order for the coupon to be of any benefit.

So, below are some ways that coupons can help us save a lot (or at least conserve) some of our green.

Important Note: Coupons are no longer limited to cut-outs from the Sunday paper that are good for a month or two. Now, coupons are in the newspaper, magazines, printable from websites and in the form of online coupons that are great when shopping on the Internet. With so many choices for coupons, we can simply save money wherever we turn.

1. Since we al have to eat, let’s start off my cutting out coupons for the grocery store. The coupons in the Sunday paper are good for everything from junk food to candy bars (not that we should be eatting a lot of these) all the way to name brand household items.

1. Get organized. Use a slotted folder or one of those coupon expandable files to hold all of your coupons. Categorize the slots so every time you go to the grocery store, you can pull out the stack of coupons that pertain to the goodies in your shopping cart. I’m presently using a 3-ring binder with the baseball card plastic holders. This way I can see all the coupons. In the past, when I used a file folder or box, I ended up stuffing them with things I never buy, I never can see what I needed at the store…then, worse, I the expire!

1. Use coupons for other things besides the grocery store. Coupons can be found in magazines on advertising pages and in amongst your mail on other days of the week, especially the freebie community newspapers and value packs that are known by most as “junk mail”. There are coupons for restaurants, car repairs, mattresses and carpet steam cleaning. Everyone will need car repairs at some point (especially after your last payment) so those auto coupons can come in handy.

1. Present your coupon before you buy in some instances. This applies to restaurants, kids or family events, and car repairs. If you have any questions about the coupon’s validity, ask before you spend the time shopping. If you can have your brakes serviced for $100, be sure that it includes both sets of brakes and the rotors and/or brake pads. Know what you are getting so you can judge if the coupon is really a good deal. I always read the fine print for family events and admission “deals”.

1. Look for other bargains to pair with your coupons. Coupons can be just like money – it burns a hole in your pocket. If you have a coupon for 20 percent off your purchase at an electronics store, shop the store circular to see if they have anything on sale that you want to purchase. Save that 20 percent off coupon for when that laptop you want goes on sale. Now, you’ll get an extra percentage off the total price. I, myself, am trying to capitalize on this nifty-trick; especially at major drug stores such as CVS, Walgreen’s & Price Rite, and department stores, such as Kohl’s, JCPenny’s and Sears.

1. Use store incentives. Some stores (mostly grocery stores) offer coupons and discounts just for signing up for their store incentive card. Just by walking in the store, you receive a discount on many items they sell. In combination with a coupon you can save more. Have you tried Stop & Shop’s handy-dandy barcode reader yet? It doesn’t necessarily save time for my shopping trips, because the girls like scanning, weighing, and bagging along the aisles…but, they became accustomed to sharing every “ding” to show off the scan-reader’s special offers–which usually ARE good deals on commodity items.

Coupons can save you money on clothing, groceries, automotive needs, travel and movies. To get the most bang for your buck, read coupons carefully and bide you time before you use them to receive the greatest benefit.

While, I admit–the art & craft of coupon shopping takes time–I developed a Family Financing Project and Incentive Program as our real life math lesson.

Since I KNOW I’m NOT a good bargain shopper, any deals my girls find, I five them some of savings (not a 50-50 split either) InshaAllah, I’ll share our kid’s financing program in a future Money-wise post.