Shout Out to Washington Heights, West Hempstead and Stamford!

The past few days, I have had the honor of spending my evenings with some wonderful groups of men and women who want to learn more about saving money and living richer lives.

Based on your questions and comments, I have put together a list of resources to help you kick-start your money-saving journey.

• We briefly talked about deal match-ups  – where frugal bloggers like me tell you what’s on sale and what coupons to use to save even more. I encourage you to follow my kosher match-ups for Target, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and Trader Joe’s.

• I also suggest that you follow a local tri-state area deal blogger, who does the sale/coupon match-ups for all your local stores. Many of you already knew about Living Rich with Coupons, but if she is new to you, I definitely recommend that you check out her grocery match-ups.

• The KOAB Coupon Database is your go-to resource for finding coupons to match-up with all your local sales. Whether you are looking to save money on mayo or margarine, just plug in the key words, press enter and quickly locate all the relevant coupons.

• If you are new to deal-shopping at the drug stores, we didn’t get to cover this in depth – but they are a boon for the couponer. You can get most of your toiletries and household cleaning supplies for pennies on the dollar. To learn how, read my CVS Tutorial and Walgreens Tutorial.

• For more information about how to organize your coupons, here is in-depth a tutorial about my no-clip coupon organization method – and a follow-up post about how to organize printable coupons (remember, my cute black and pink organizer?!)
  

• Whether you live in an apartment or a home, making room for some stockpiling is an essential way to keep your grocery budget LOW. Here’s a review of how stockpiling can save you money – and even allow you to give more generously. I’ve also written about how to fit stockpiling into your budget.

• If you need help with menu planning ideas, which we covered rather quickly last night, you can find a helpful series of posts about Menu Planning here, including how I make monthly  menu planning work for us.

• For those interested in learning more about saving for annual expenses (the West Hempstead crowd asked about clothing and other ongoing costs), you can read this tutorial I posted about our ING Sink Funds and here’s more information on Sink Funds in general.

• You may also enjoy perusing the posts I’ve written on Budgeting Basics, including these tutorials on using the free money-tracker, Mint.com.

• And finally, if you’re not already, I hope you will stay in touch with me by “liking” the KOAB Facebook page and subscribing for the free KOAB daily email newsletter.

If you have questions, comments or just want to chat, you can always reach me by email. And if you have any pictures from your event, I’d love for you to share them with me!

Thank you again to all the sponsors of these wonderful events:  Jewish Community Council of Washington Heights – Inwood, Nishei YU, and Shenk Shul, the Sisterhood of Congregation Anshei Shalom, and Shana Engel-Yakubovich.

And a special thank you to my hosts Shelley and Ariel Serber and Lenore and Ilan Fogel. xo