In a previous post, I explained how to use the website the Grocery Game to save hundreds of dollars a week on your groceries combining the Grocery Game's shopping list with the coupons in weekly newspaper circulars. This post is about another website, Saving Star,  which also saves you money on your groceries with little effort.

The way this website works is very simple. Create a free account with your email address and your grocery rewards card. Then click on "Grocery Offers."

This will bring you to a page of coupons. Go through the coupons you plan to (or may) buy and click on "I want this." This coupon is now activated and will automatically redeem the next time you meet the criteria of the coupon while also using your grocery card. You can keep track of the coupons you activated to buy the products and earn maximum savings at the grocery store, simply forget about it and play coupon Russian roulette like I do, or try a combination of the two. No matter how you do it,  the site will put your coupon savings into an account for you which you can cash out via an online transfer to Paypal or your bank account once the amount reaches at least $5.00.

Saving Star will also email you reminders or notices when new coupons have arrived, so you do not need to remember to visit the site once you have registered. I often activate my coupons when I have a few minutes to spare while waiting in line or for an appointment.

Give it a try, you will love transferring the unexpected cash back into your bank account.

A few years ago after watching several episodes of Extreme Couponing, I thought I would give it a try. Not knowing where to start, I searched online and found The Grocery Game. The site offered a four-week free trial, so I gave it a shot and liked what I found. I do not do it every week and some weeks I coupon more than others, but overall, this website has saved me more than $6,000 on groceries. This week, if I had bought every item on the list, I could have saved more than $900, but I chose to narrow it down and saved $120 instead.

How it works

The website tracks sales on almost every product in national grocery chains then matches these with current coupons to find customers the best deals. It also color codes these items into three categories: good deals (black), invest (blue), and free (green).

• A good deal (black) is a product on sale but not worth stocking up on because the price most likely will go lower in the future.
• Invest (blue) means to stock up on these items now. I did this once and ended up with a lot, and I mean a lot, of cereal. I then ignored when cereal went on sale again. This was a mistake because when my cereal supply had dwindled down to nothing, cereal was no longer on sale and it was a while before it did again. That is when I realized companies issue coupons cyclically. In other words, particular types of products go on sale at certain times of the year. For example, periodically there will be many coupons for toilet paper. When this happens, stock up on toilet paper, because in a few weeks it may not be on sale.

• Free (green) is obvious – it is free. There are around four free items a week on my list.

The website leads you through three steps: customizing your list, gathering coupons, and printing the list for your trip to the store.

The first step, customizing your list, provides a weekly list of items on sale. You go through this list and select the items you wish to buy. This week I could have purchased 351 items. After customizing my list, I purchased 74 products.

The second step is gathering coupons, which is more time consuming than customizing the list. Coupons are organized into four main categories: the grocery store's digital coupons, The Grocery Game printable coupons, manufacturers' internet coupons, and those from Sunday newspaper inserts.

Grocers provide digital coupons on their websites, which The Grocery Game will direct you to upload to your grocery card. This often require scrolling through coupons you may not be interested in, but once you have, it is much easier as it does not require printing and gathering coupons. All you need to do is swipe your card at check out, and the savings are there.

Another set of coupons The Grocery Game uses is located on its website. The site automatically queues up the printable coupons specific to your list, so all you have to do is hit the print button and send them to your printer.

This website also locates manufacturers' coupons on their websites. The downside to these coupons is that the companies often require submitting email addresses to receive them. It is a bit more time consuming, and you may end up receiving emails from the manufacturers.

The final type of coupons is those in the Sunday newspaper. The Grocery Game suggests collecting the weekly inserts and keeping them until the coupons expire. There are three main coupon advertising inserts in most major city Sunday newspapers: Smart Source, Red Plum, and Procter & Gamble. Simple mark the date on the front of each one and then organize them for easy use. I place mine chronologically in a magazine holder.

The final step is printing out your list and shopping. You may end up with multiple pages of your list. I attach the coupons specific to each sheet with a paper clip, so I can find them easily when I am at the store. You may also find that the prices on your list do not always match your store. Sometimes store managers do not follow their chains' pricing on certain items, so be sure to check that the price on the list is the same at your store.

Cost to you

The first four weeks of the trial are free. When that is over, the subscription price depends on the number of stores you sign up for coupon lists. I signed up for only one store, which is $5 a month, or roughly $1.25 week. If you consider the amount of time it would take to track all the prices at your grocery store and then match them with all the coupons available, it would take you considerably more than $1.25 worth of your time. It is money well spent.

The second cost to you is the Sunday paper, about $2 a week. This is not necessary to use the website as printable coupons and links to digital coupons are available. However, I do recommend buying the Sunday paper for the inserts.

This brings the total cost to you for one store a week to $3.25.

Don’t worry - you’ll save more than you spend. Just this week I received the three above items for free. They originally cost $5.77, so I saved $2.52 right off the bat. Since I forgot to buy the paper one week I did not have the coupon for another free item. Otherwise I would have save $3.52.

How to save time

As I said before, I could have saved more than $900 this week and I could subscribe to more than one grocery chain. However, even having someone else do all the work takes time. The more you want to save, the longer it will take. How much time you want to spend depends completely on you. I have found doing the entire list takes a lot of time, so I use some time savers.

The first thing I do is sort by the percentage of savings. The free products will be in green at the top of the list. As I stated above, the four free items this week were worth $6.77.  There were no items between 90-99% off, but there were six items in the 80-89% category. These six items with coupons cost $2.07 and included a savings of $10.98. In all there were 28 products with a savings of 70% or more totaling $17.99 with a savings of $62.42. So if you are in a rush, just buy the items with the greatest savings.

Another way to save time is sorting by final sales price. For example, you may want to look at everything under $1. My list this week had 106 items in this price range with a sales cost of $69.66 and a savings of $97.61.

After I sort with the above criteria, I arrange the list by color and go through the blue items I have not selected yet. You are not going to buy everything on the list as there will be products you do not need or want. For example, if you do not own a cat, you will not be buying kitty litter. Finally, I skim through the black items I use regularly but only purchase what I need at the moment. Then I gather up the coupons and head to the store. It's all very simple.

If you want to save money, give it a try. My final bill this week? $99.14 for $219.90 worth of groceries.