Watching my 3yr old daughter play with plastic kitchens, plastic shopping carts, plastic shopping baskets, plastic plates and cups, plastic cash registers and plastic money all the way down to every conceivable food item in plastic form, got me thinking about how kids learn about food, not just their origins but how we buy them.

Charlotte has so much fun playing with food, she wants so desperately to cook and clean, and buy foodie.  She rings up her purchases on the cash register and pays the fake money regardless of what comes up as the total. 

If only it were that simple.

Budgeting food along other living expenses at anytime can be difficult, but even more so in a recession.

Everyone has their approach to shopping, along with their strategies for saving $ whether it be buying in bulk, making items from scratch or recycling.

You pick most of these up as you are indoctrinated into the world of shopping by going through the process with your parents.

All of these have saved us tremendous amounts of $, but no more so than one simple strategy.

Use coupons, and compound them on weekly specials.

We approach shopping by applying coupons to the weekly specials from several stores.  We don't necessarily go to every store to buy one or two loss-leaders, we look to find the stores that have the majority and then match up coupons to them.

By doing this you can effectively pay lower than wholesale prices without committing to buying in bulk, which coincidentally if done at a Costco or Meglomart doesn't save you any money anyways.

There are several resources for identifying deals, and some websites that even pointout how best to match coupons to specials.

Our list of usual suspects includes:

smartcanucks

http://smartcanucks.ca/

Dealcetera

http://dealcetera.com/

bargain moose

http://www.bargainmoose.ca/

incomeXchange

http://www.incomexchange.com/

save.ca

http://save.ca/english/index.php

GoCoupons.ca

http://www.gocoupons.ca/home.html

flyerland.ca

http://aurora.flyerland.ca/

Some of the posting on these sites overlap, but there are several unique deals that get posted on each that balance everything out.

Rethinking your approach to shopping from paying huge $ in exchange for convenience, to doing a little detective work up front can net you some serious $. Ultimately when you break down your cost savings vs the time offset on an hourly basis you'll come to realize what an impact this has.

Saving money this route can be aplied to higher priced organic items, or items from local vendors that cost more than the grocery store.

What got me thinking about the plastic toys and the cash registers is what lessons are being taught about conservation, savvy shopping and recycling to our kids. 

There are no plastic coupons, or weekly flyers, the concept of saving doesn't seem to be encouraged, and that is a shame.

There is a marginal increase in work to pull this off, but I want to emphasize marginal.  The savings outweigh the convenience.