Saving money can be a lot of work, especially when you first begin.  I’ve received several emails from readers that recently found me after an article I was mentioned in, and a lot of them don’t know where to begin and feel extremely overwhelmed after going through my blog.

It’s OK if you feel this way, you should!  If this is all new to you then I don’t expect you to be able to go out to a store tomorrow and save $50.  It’s just not possible for most to start out that way.

I will say this.  Figure out what you want to do, where you want to start and how much time and effort you want to put into it.  You can begin by making yourself a money saving guide and include areas you’d like to save money so you have a starting off point and over time you can add to it.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started.  You can choose to do one or more of these ideas but don’t take on more than you can handle….

• Pick one store and try that out for a few weeks or a month and the add another store. Learn how to save money using Extra Care Bucks at CVS or Register Rewards at Walgreens.  You don’t even need to combine these with coupons yet if you’d like.  You will still save money.
• For a few weeks just clip printable coupons and use before you move onto sorting through the Sunday coupon inserts.  There are a lot of printable coupon sites and I’m sure you can find products you use.  Even if you only use $10 worth of coupons in your first transaction, that’s $10 more you have than you would of buying the same products.
• Only buy sale items and plan your meals around what’s on sale.  If chicken breasts are on sale for $1.99 lb stock up and turn that into a few meals for the week.  There is so much you can do with chicken as the main protein in your meals, you can even make lunches with chicken.  If green peppers and carrots are on sale stock up on those and pull out your recipe book to see what you can do with them.

Just doing one or more of the above ideas will help you begin to save money.  Once you get the hang of it you can slowly combine all of them together and shop 2-3 stores a week and buy what’s on sale using coupons.  That’s what I do and you see how much I save.

One thing I do want to point out.  If you’ve looked at any of my weekly reviews you’ll notice in the pictures that there’s not always ‘complete’ meals shown.  That’s because I buy ahead when things are on sale and then plan my meals around what I have and sometimes combine that with what’s on sale that week.

Try it out and let us know how you do.  If you have any questions or even ideas I might not have mentioned I’d love for you to leave a comment.