Couponing for Good with All You and Champions for Kids

This month I am teaming up with Champions for Kids and All You to showcase Couponing for Good!  This month’s simple service project is to use coupons to save money and donate to an organization that assists parents and children to get the necessities they need.

The facts and statistics are scary because here in America every 34 seconds another child is born into poverty.  Did you know that 1 in 7 Amercians are using SNAP (Food Stamps) to get them the food they need to feed their family?  The majority of these adults needing to be on the SNAP program have children that they have to feed.

Couponing is perfect for this because it allows you to get what you would need, good quality products for minimal cost.  This is not about extreme couponing or hoarding it is all about purchasing what you need at the lowest cost possible.

This simple service project strikes a chord with me for many reasons one of which is because my son had severe feeding problems as a baby.  He was allergic to my breast milk, because of the things I was eating; however, I did not know what he was actually allergic to.  We found out later he had a lactose intolerance.  This was after we tried at least 10 different formula’s.  We finally found one that works, Nutramigen.  The only problem was a small can of this formula was $30 a can.  I did notice while shopping this week the price has gone down some since we purchased it.

When we planned out having a baby, we assumed I would breastfeed.  I had to stop after 6 weeks, then around 3 months old he was put on this formula after many hard issues prior.  We spent around $400 a month on formula for him for the first year of his life.  At this same time shortly after having my son, I cut my hours down to part time to be home with him more.  This meant not only did we have this extra $400 we had to pay for formula, we also had almost 1/2 the income we once had.

In saying all this, coupons were our lifesaver during this time.  My sister used coupons as a way to help them out when her son was diagnosed with severe food allergies, so she taught me how to do it and for that first year nearly everything I purchased had a coupon with it.

I also came to know and love All You Magazine during that time because of the coupons in it I was able to save even more on healthy foods at the store.

For this particular service project, I chose to donate to Mend Pregnancy Resource Center.  Their needs involve baby items such as food, diapers, and clothes.  I purchased primarily Beech-Nut Baby Food Products, luckily they have a rewards program that has wonderful coupons to use on their products.

Since my son is no longer on baby foods, I do not have coupons readily available for them, so on this trip I was able to use coupons for my grocery items that we needed that saved me enough money to then purchase many baby food items to donate.  That is just another thing I love about coupons, it easily saves you money and it allows me to give back more.

I will admit, I’m a highly unorganized couponer, but I do coupon.  I am not quite as strict on myself with coupons as I once was; however, I still cannot bring myself to buy certain items without coupons and sales.  To see my full shopping trip, head over to Google +.

Do you coupon?  Are you up for the challenge of Couponing for Good?

Join me this month and together we can give back.  To learn more on this simple service project, head over to Champions for Kids.  Be sure to follow along on Twitter at #AllYouCFK or on Facebook.

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. #CBias  All thoughts and opinions are my own.