This is the view today from my kitchen balcony. It has been beautiful here for the past few days. We can only hope that it will stay this way for the next few weeks. My parents and one of my nieces are coming for a visit. We cannot wait. the little girls are counting the days.
I have been trying to come up with ideas for my blog and the task is not easy. I would like to do many topics and so I am going to narrow it down. Today I am going to talk a little bit about how I save money on groceries while living in Norway.
This was my savings the other day at the shopette/commissary. We have a very small one here. It has very limited items and not really any sales. You will not see General Mills cereals 2 for 5 or anything like that. Sometimes they have a table of things that are buy one get one free, but it may not be things we like or use. They do however have a couple of shelves of stuff that is 50-75% off and when you combine that with coupons you can get some great deals. The great thing about shopping overseas here is that you can use coupons that are up to six months expired. So I get my family and friends to sned me their expired coupons. I clip what I use and then pass them on to others in the community. Of the $55.74 that I saved, $21.90 was with coupons and the rest from buying reduced items.
In the states my grocery budget per month for my family of six was $400 here it is $1000. We have to buy all fresh produce on the economy and things here are expensive. I try to buy what is on sale and it makes you not waste because you only buy if you are going to use. A pound of grapes here is $5 not on sale sometimes you can find them for $3.30 a pound whne they are on sale. A cucumber is $2.45 and again if on sale you might can find them for $1.55. So I try to buy the fruit and vegetables that are on sale that week. We always try to have some things like bananas,tomatoes, peppers and onions whether they are on sale or not. I keep trying to cut back and get an even smaller number for my budget, but after a year of living here I have decided that I cannot cut much more. Norway has sales, but not many and they don't have coupons. The closest thing to coupons is one of the stores has a buying program and you pay 300 NOK or about $52 and you get a percentage each year of your purchases and they send you coupons for money off the items that you seem to buy a few time a year. Just last week I got 1.75L of milk for free. So as you can see I still save and search for the deals even in another country.
I hope that you get inspired to see where you can save money on the things that you buy. Living debt free has been our goal and except for our mortage we are there and I can say that we have not suffered by saving and finding the deals to reach our goal. We are even using the envelope system here in Norway. Come back to see how we implemented that system in a foreign country.
