Finding great deals is an exciting adventure, but it is not an adventure to relish alone. By sharing shopping tips with friends and family, everyone can participate and be enveloped with the excitement of scoring the best deals. Here are a few ideas on how to share some shopping tips with those you love.
Over the past year, with the recession growing on people’s minds, the use of coupons has become an art. Help others find this fine art and teach them what you know. Compare receipts after every shopping trip to see who saved the most, both in total dollars and percentage of the final bill. For instance, one person may have saved $100 on their trip, while the other saved almost 80%.
Get together for coupon clipping and see who can find the most coupons for a certain item, or who can find the biggest coupon amount. Rotate homes each week and make sure you have some food at this get together.
List an item each week and see who can get it the cheapest. Let’s take Cheerios as an example. By the end of the week, the goal is to be able to combine the most coupons and store deals to get a box of Cheerios the cheapest. Of course, this is only one idea as far as making a game with your shopping habits.
Another possibility is to go through the week and see who can find the best deal, not even worrying about the category that it is in. Let’s say someone found a pair of shoes that were originally $300 and ended up with them, in hand, for $50, while another person purchased a certain brand of cereal for free, even though it never goes on sale. This game will have to be judged on a personal system, between friends because it is difficult to assign a point value across categories. The winner is whoever the group thought got the best deal on what they bought.
This goes right along with making a game of frugality. Invite a group of friends over and have each one bring a dish. To add to the difficulty, create a spending cap when making the dish. For instance, no prepared dish will be over five dollars. This forces people to get clever with their shopping and allows everyone else in attendance to get different ideas for frugal shopping and cooking. If the honor system won’t work for you, then have everyone bring in their receipts and award a prize to the best dish and also the least expensive meal.
The point is, when you share your shopping tips with others, everyone can win. Money is saved and fun is had at the same time. By sharing shopping tips with friends and family, you have just one more avenue to connect on, and isn’t that the whole point? Sure, saving money is great, but why not have some fun with those closest to you at the same time.
Pressure cooking is not only faster and a healthier way to cook but, it also saves energy. The amount of heat, electricity and gas used by a stove is greatly reduced when using a pressure cooker. Pressure cooking is much safer and healthier than microwaving. 
