Piggy Bank Friendly: Saving Money at Whole Foods

An important re-blog: I came across a game changing article recently. The biggest excuse and real life concern I hear in regards to buying organic food is the high costs. So, realistically, how can we eat toxin-free diet when we have to abide by a grocery budget?This is where Danny Seo comes into play. He is an environmental lifestyle expert, who appears frequently on The Today Show. His cool resume: he has created an organic mattress line with Simmons Natural Care, a beauty and skincare line called Wholearth by Danny Seo, and has written a lineup of Simply Green books about gift-giving and party-planning. Oh, and his latest must-read, Upcycling, "features hundreds of innovative, easy and eco-friendly craft projects that turn useless stuff into beautiful new things."See his tips below on saving money at Whole Foods. This equation should no longer be an issue: organic food + grocery budget = an impossibility.Tip #1: Yes, Whole Foods takes coupons. One of the biggest misconceptions about Whole Foods is that because they operate differently than big box supermarkets, they must not take coupons. Wrong. Granted, finding coupons in your Sunday circular for probiotic raw coconut juice or ylang ylang oil is not going to happen, but mainstream organic brands like Kashi and Silk soy milk do advertise. And here's the kicker: Whole Foods itself has downloadable coupons right on their own website. That's about $40 off right there.Tip #2: Can't find a coupon? Ask for it. When you can't find coupons for your favorite products, the simplest thing is to play into the whole social media "trend" all of these consumer brands seem to be obsessed about. Make a list of your Top 10 Always Buy items at Whole Foods. Now spend a minute hitting the LIKE button for all of them on Facebook. Periodically, brands like Morningstar Farms and Honest Tea release money saving coupons to their Facebook fans.Or, tweet that you love a specific product and can't live without it. I found this delicious Siggi Icelandic yogurt and tweeted about it. They wrote right back saying they wanted to send coupons for some free yogurt. And even emailing a company directly and just outright asking for coupons surprisingly works pretty well, too. The folks at Method cleaning products like their fans so much they reward them with coupons for nice emails.Tip #3: Join Recyclebank.com; it's free. Recyclebank.com is an online community that rewards eco-behavior with huge money saving coupons. Sign up for free and learn really helpful tips on going a little bit more green at home, at work and with your family. Each time you pledge to do something, your account is rewarded with points. Then you can shop with those points under "Rewards" for really good deals on things like $2 off any Kashi product, $2 off any two packages of Earthbound Farm organic salad mixes, $1 off Dagoba chocolates, $1 off any (2) Stonyfield Oikos organic greek yogurt and $2 off any Kiss my Face product $5 or more. These aren't rinky dink fifty cent off deals, but actual full dollar increments. The average Recyclebank members saves about $133 off their supermarket bill each year. And, again, it's free. The more you learn, the more points you earn, and the more you save. More than 2 million people so far are on the Recyclebank bandwagon.Tip #4: Pay it Forward. My policy is even if I have a coupon for something, I don't buy it if I don't really use it. Lots of time I'll just leave the coupons on top of the products in Whole Foods so someone who does use it can save. So, if some strange woman leaves behind, say, twenty $2 off Boca Burger coupons at your market and you hoard them all for yourself, pay it forward next time by leaving a stack of Cascadian Farm organic cereal coupons in the breakfast food aisle the following week. Together, we can help each other save.Danny Seo
: Official Site;  Daily Danny: Official BlogSource and Photo