Most of us need to stretch our grocery food budget, but when you have kids this need to save can become even more urgent. The grocery bill just doesn’t go as far these days, especially when there are more family members to feed. Plus, if you decide to stay home with your kids, using coupons can be a way to contribute financially to the household without working outside the home. Either way, it is extreme couponing to the rescue.

Can I Do Extreme Couponing with Kids?

Super shoppers can definitely practice extreme couponing while raising their kids. The key is to start slowly and work up to whatever time and effort that works for you and your family. Don’t compare your weekly stockpile hauls to others and don’t expect to be able to get completely up and running right away. Even extreme couponers who don’t have kids at home can take years to get to the point of saving thousands of dollars on groceries.

Plus, you don’t want to spend hours and hours a day away from your family in order to get the deals.
Incorporate the following shopping tips for extreme couponing with kids.

Get the Kids Involved in Extreme Couponing

Your kids can learn valuable money saving skills, as well as math skills such as addition and subtraction while clipping coupons. Even little ones can practice their scissor skills with coupons (start them with some extra insert pages that you don’t need). There is also sorting, writing practice and more. Plus kids can feel important and get a sense of accomplishment.

Older kids can be paid a small “fee” to cut coupons for you, or calculate how the savings will add up to a family goal, such as a vacation to Disney World or a new big screen television.

If you donate some of your haul, explain to your kids where the products are going, thanks to grocery coupons, and how they will be able to help others in need.

How to Do Extreme Couponing Shopping

While running to do a couple of small drugstore deals with kids might not be too bad, when it comes to the big extreme couponing trips, you might want to leave the kids at home, at least when it comes to any children under ten.

Young children can be a distraction in the store that can really affect the shopping results. There may be times when you have to recalculate deals on the spot, talk to the manager or visit the customer service desk. Plus doing a major shopping trip can take hours. Try time to time your big shopping deals day to a time when you can go without the kids.

How can you shop alone, you ask? If you don’t have a spouse or family member to watch the kids, offer to trade baby sitting with another extreme couponer or split a portion of your free products with a friend in exchange for child-free shopping.

If this isn’t an option and you will have the children with you, try to break up your shopping into smaller more frequent trips. Assign the kids different roles such as finding the yogurt, pushing a cart, counting out items or checking things off of the list. Hand your child a coupon that has a picture of the product and ask him or her to find it on the shelf. Some of these “games” can go a long way to helping you accomplish your extreme couponing goals while shopping with kids.

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