Money Mom Podcast

81: How to Save $300 in 14 Days (Without Clipping Coupons)

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What if your pantry could literally pay you? It might sound wild, but it’s true. There is money sitting in your kitchen right now, and in this episode, Rachel shows you how to find it.

If you’ve ever felt the financial pinch of the holidays or wondered how to get ahead without completely overhauling your budget, this episode is the perfect place to start. You’ll learn how to Shop the Shelf, the first step in Rachel’s signature SHOP Method, and discover how thousands of families have saved $300 to $500 in just two weeks by using what they already have.

Rachel shares:
 ✨ Why your grocery budget is the easiest place to create fast financial wins
✨ How to reduce food waste and instantly stretch your grocery dollars
✨ The confidence and momentum that come from small, consistent changes

You’ll also get an inside look at the new Pantry Payday Challenge, a 14-day experience designed to help you save at least $300 before the holidays, no side hustle required.

🎧 Tune in, take action, and learn how to make your kitchen work for your bank account instead of against it.

Want to quickly save $300 in 14-days? Click here to join:
https://www.heyrachelcoons.com/pantrypayday

xoxo,
Rachel

Where to find me:
Instagram: @heyrachelcoons

Join me for my next LIVE training 'Save $600 On Groceries'!: REGISTER HERE

SPEAKER_00:

What if your pantry could literally pay you? And I know that sounds wild, but I'm serious. There is money sitting in your kitchen right now, and you probably don't even know it. In this episode, we're talking about how shopping the shelf can help you save$300 in just two weeks. And if you're ready to see for yourself, I'll show you how you can join us in our first ever pantry payday event at the end of this episode. So stay tuned. Welcome to the Money Mom Podcast, the show where we empower moms to take control of their finances, break free from money stress, and build a life of freedom, confidence, and abundance for their families. I'm your host, Rachel Coons, mom, money mentor, and your personal cheerleader on this journey. Whether you're here to save money, pay off debt, or dream bigger for your family's future, you're in the right place. Here, we believe that being a mom is already a full-time job. But your role in shaping your family's financial success is just as important. And the best part, you don't need to sacrifice everything to start winning with money. Let's get started. This is the Money Mom Podcast. Hey there, welcome back to the Money Mom Podcast. So happy that you are here listening today at the end of October. Uh, it's a crazy week, I know, for most moms with Halloween coming up, and then it's like we're jumping straight into the holidays. And I don't know about you, but the holidays can bring a lot of stress and anxiety when it comes to my finances and building enough savings and just feeling like I'm staying on top of all of the lists of things that I have to do. It's like our life as a mom is crazy enough, and then you add the 500 extra things we have to do in the month of December, and I start to feel that anxiety, that pressure coming already in October. So I'm trying to set myself up for success this holiday season and being really intentional about where we spend our money, what I spend my time and energy on. And I did a podcast episode last year about kind of some of the things that I sifted through as far as like what was important to me with my family and then what wasn't, and really separating out those two. So if you're someone who is stressed about the holidays and what's coming, you can go back and listen to that episode. Um, I think we released it in November of last year, but I probably will do an episode similar to that one this year because again, I do feel like uh as we roll into the November, December months, it can get, it can get really overwhelming. So I'm here with you. I feel it as well. Um, but today we're gonna talk about how to really set yourself up for success financially when it comes to being able to pay for the holidays. And if you're living paycheck to paycheck or you're worried about the extra pinch that the holidays can put on your wallet, this episode is for you. This episode is also for you if you're someone who feels like a little bit overwhelmed with starting to budget and getting in control of your finances, or you're feeling like you're spending too much on groceries and you want to get started, but you feel overwhelmed trying to implement the whole shop method, or you're not quite ready to join the Money Mom Club yet and overhaul everything, this episode is for you as well. So a few years ago, when I was trying to get in control of our finances, I just had my fourth child and I felt like budgeting was impossible. I'm not someone that naturally likes to budget. And when it comes to running a household and trying to like do the laundry, run the carpool, get dinner on the table every night, adding on that other layer of money and finances and budgeting just felt like really overwhelming. But one day I realized that instead of trying to fix everything and overall all of our money situation, I could just focus on my grocery spending, right? And that's like the whole story of how the shop method came about, how the money mom club was birthed, and how I now am here doing this podcast with you listening. And um, maybe you follow me on social media, maybe you are on our email list and you know kind of behind the scenes what we're doing. But that's where it all started was just this one focus on I'm gonna do something about our grocery spending and I'm gonna spend less on groceries so that I can take that money and put it elsewhere. We had financial goals, like everyone does, whether that's paying off debt, whether that's building an emergency fund, whether that's just like funding your next family vacation. And when when we break it down into like what are the things that you value in life and where do you want your money to go? A lot of people don't put grocery spending on the high list of their values. Now, that's not to say it's important to feed your family and it's important to feed them healthy, nutritious food. That 100% can be important. But when we really get down to like what are the things that bring you the most joy, what are the things that light you up inside and get you really excited to wake up and get out of bed in the morning, I'm willing to bet that groceries is not high on that list. And so when we look at our spending and we get intentional with where our money is going every month, if groceries is one of your highest expenses every month and it's not high on your value list, maybe we could do something about it. My husband was just telling me about a patient that he saw recently. He's a dentist and he owns a practice here in our in where we live. And he was talking to a patient who was struggling to be able to pay for some dental work. And then she was talking about how she goes to the grocery store every couple days, and her husband gets really upset with her because she's spending like two to three thousand dollars a month for her family of four at the grocery store. And my husband, knowing what I do, was like, wait a second, you could spend significantly less on groceries if you wanted to, and have that money to be put towards your health or things, other things that are important. And this lady and the hygienist that he has at his office was like, Wait, what? What are you talking about? And he's like, Yeah, my wife spends about$800 a month for our family of six on groceries, and here's how she does it. And she kind of he kind of like um broke down the shop method for them, and they were like, Wait, what? Like, this is the craziest thing we've ever heard that you spend so little on groceries, and you still are able to be really intentional with your spending. And so he like told me this story after work and was like, Rachel, your message is so important for so many moms to be able to feel in control and to cut an area of your spending that so many people are overspending. In fact, the average American family is overspending$800 every single month just on groceries alone. And there's not very many other budgets that when we look at, we could significantly decrease the amount that we can with groceries. And that's why I'm so passionate about this is like we don't have to overhaul your whole spending routine. We don't have to run the spreadsheets, we don't have to run all the numbers. We could literally just focus on one budget, and that one budget could change everything. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about how there's a domino effect when we just focus on that one budget. It's like looking at the massive chocolate cake. If you've ever, if you grew up watching Matilda, imagine that massive chocolate cake and we're told by Principal Turnbull that we have to eat the whole cake. But what if instead of having to devour that whole cake, we just took one slice one day at a time and we focused on eating the cake slowly instead of all at once? And that's what I try to do with my members and the people that are jumping into this world is if you're in debt, and hopefully you listened to the podcast episode with Jenna a couple weeks ago, how she paid off$42,000 of debt in just one year. If we just hyperfocus on one area of our spending, now it's not the only solution. Well, it's not the only area of your finances that we need to overhaul. Of course, there's more at stake here. But if we simplify it and we niche down into this one specific area of our spending, we build foundational principles. We build really important building blocks that then we can go and learn more from and be able to take what we learn in this one area and apply it to so many different other areas of our spending. But there needs to be a starting point. And that starting point needs to have a low barrier to entry. If I am someone who wants to eat the whole chocolate cake and feels overwhelmed doing it, then maybe I just need to look at the chocolate cake differently. And maybe I just need to focus on the one slice at a time. And so that's what that's what I that's what I do. That's why I'm so passionate about starting with their groceries. Because I know expenses can feel really out of control, but chances are your groceries are the one that is the most out of control. But what if you could turn this budget into something that creates peace, freedom, and then even a little bit of extra holiday money, right? That's the goal is could we save enough money in the next month to be able to pay for Christmas? And I'm going to tell you with a resounding yes, you can. We can start to chip away at this one budget. And um I'm gonna show you exactly how to do that. So if you're not familiar with the shop method, the shop method is my four-step system that I teach families to save$600 on average on groceries every month. And I teach the shot teach the shop method comprehensively inside Grocery Budget Bootcamp, which is available to my money mom club members. But if you're just getting started, again, I'm just I want to bite-size this down. I want to focus on just the entry point. What are we gonna start with? The first step of the shop method is shop. And shopping the shelf may seem like a pretty basic principle, but it has massive implications and a massive ripple effect when it comes to how you look at planning, shopping, and cooking for your family. So shopping the shelf means starting with what you already own in your house. So looking at your pantry, your fridge, and your freezer and building your meals and your grocery lists and everything that you do around what's already in your house. Because I always say this: the food in your house is free, right? We don't have to pay for that food anymore. But when we create a shopping list and we're buying all brand new food or creating a recipe of all brand new items, we have to pay for those items when we go to the grocery store. So if we in turn kind of flip that on its head and say, wait, I don't actually want to shop from the store, I want to shop from my shelf. We can save so much money and you can save so much money really, really fast. In fact, I am going to say that you can save at least$300 in just two weeks of shopping the shelf. So again, really quick wins and really quick results just by focusing on the S of the shop method. Another thing that's massive about shopping the shelf is that it will help you reduce food waste. The average American family wastes 30% of the food that they buy. And Canadians, I'm willing to bet that you're around that same area of how much you're wasting. So that means if you're spending$1,000 on groceries every single month, that you're literally wasting a third of that, which is$300 every single month. So when we can really focus on using the food that we have, not throwing out the extra produce and perishable items, we can decrease your spending by a massive amount just by focusing on food waste. And one of the biggest indicators of food waste is do you use up the food that you have on hand before you go purchase new food at the grocery store? How many times do we go buy new produce items when there's produce items that's sitting in your fridge that hasn't been eaten or used? Another part of that is leftovers. How often are you making a dinner, putting the leftovers in the fridge, and nobody's eating them, and that ends up as food waste as well? So food waste is a big part of your grocery spending, and shopping the shelf really helps combat that. Now, another thing that shopping the shelf is really important in doing is it creates a level of awareness that we didn't have before. How many times do we organize the pantry or organize the deep freezer in the outside freezer and we find ingredients and food that we literally had been pushed back or dropped to the bottom of the freezer and we didn't even know was there? I'm 100% guilty of this when I go through sometimes to inventory my food. I'll go through my fridge and be like, oh my gosh, I had like five pounds of ground beef sitting in my freezer that I didn't even know was there. So it creates a level of intention and awareness so that we focus on, okay, what food do I actually have in my house and how can I use that up? It helps us get creative when it comes to meal planning. We can, it makes actually meal planning so much easier when you meal plan around shopping the shelf because it will give you ideas. You don't have to think up new recipes. You can literally use up what's already there. And once you start to see the ripple effects of being able to shop the shelf, it will also create momentum. Because when you save once, you'll realize what's possible the more you get into this. Now, I was uh in the health and wellness industry before I decided to stay at home with my kids. And one of the biggest indicators of someone who joined a workout plan or a diet plan or was trying to lose weight, one of the biggest indicators that someone would stick with the plan. So if I was a personal trainer, I would give them a plan when they first started. And we could tell, like 80% of the time, if someone finds results in the first two weeks to one month of starting a new workout plan, a new diet, a new lifestyle, if they saw results, meaning they saw inches lost, weight lost, we could predict whether that person would actually stay on the plan just by the results that they fall that they saw at the first couple weeks. What that means is that results breed more momentum, right? If I don't, if I start a new diet plan and I don't lose any wheat weight in the first two weeks, do you think I'm gonna want to stay on that diet plan? Well, it's the same way when we start to budget and get intentional with our spending. If we don't get quick wins right away, if we don't see the change that could happen, you're not gonna stick with it. So I try to, when it comes to working with moms and and getting them into this world of like controlling the money, I try to get you a win really, really quick. I want you to see how powerful this can be. And if I were to say, like you could have an extra$300 in your account in two weeks, that gets people really excited. And I'm highly confident that we can do it. And so I want you to see those results. And the final thing that's really important is that it also builds confidence. And this is a thing I see so often when people are trying to get in control of their money, there's not much confidence there because the past has shown you that you aren't good at running the numbers, that you aren't good at controlling your spending, you aren't good at paying off debt. And so you're letting your past dictate your future. And you think, if I've never been good at this in the past, how could I be good at it in the future? But when you realize that just little tiny changes can make a massive effect, then you're gonna have the confidence to continue doing it and to continue seeing the results that can happen. And here's what's super cool though this one small step, right? Just simply shopping the shelf is actually part of a much bigger system that we teach inside the Money Mom Club, the shop, the shop method. And that shop method has helped thousands of families save tons and tons of money on groceries. So that's why it's it's the first starting step. It's the domino. We push over that one domino and we see all the other dominoes fall into place as well. And hopefully, if you're listening to this episode, you're resonating with the fact that, yeah, I can, I can do this, and it's very possible for me. When you shop yourselves, you're not just saving money. I hope you realize that that's so much more than that. You're shifting your energy, you're creating abundance in your life, you're working through the mindset shifts that ripple into every part of your finances. It's how we stop living paycheck to paycheck, it's how we start building margin in our in our budgets and how we build momentum into what can be possible when you just focus on one thing. So we run a shop the shelf experience inside Money Mom Club. And we've done it ever since I started this online community. And it's literally one of our members' favorite experiences. We do 14 days of like here every day. We're gonna give you a new task on how to shop the shelf and how to quickly work through the food in your house, how we build a meal plan from it, how we then build the stock back up after this experience. And our members save so much money in just two weeks. So I want to share some results that we've had from specific members. So, Kathy, this was a couple years ago. She said, so, so much to be grateful for. I now have a changed mindset toward meal planning and grocery shopping that is greatly reducing our food waste and saving money. I also have so much more peace around dinner time, and I have been loving this community for great ideas, accountability, encouragement. Now, listen to this. For our household of six, I have spent$68 during the challenge. I am saving$500 over my usual spending. Absolutely incredible. I have learned that I don't need to go to the store every week or multiple times a week to feed my family well and delicious food. And shopping the shelf is a game changer, helping me learn what a well-stocked kitchen really looks like and how to manage it long term. So she saved$500 in two weeks. Now here's another one. I, this is somebody who's halfway through the challenge. So day seven. I love that this challenge has made me aware of what I'm buying and what I'm feeding my family. I've really leaned into meal planning and using what we have. I'm happy to buy fresh produce, milk, and eggs for our house. And I've been great at just buying the necessities, even when I have stepped foot in the store. This challenge has really encouraged me to be intentional about groceries, but also eating out and shopping in general. See, that's the ripple effect. It doesn't just affect what you're buying at the grocery store. I'm on path to significant savings in our overall spending this month. I'm I've already saved$250 in one week. So that's just some of the results that we see when people jump into shopping the shelf. We've run this challenge. I think it'll be our fifth time running this challenge inside the Money Mom Club. And I thought a couple months ago that I wanted to let more people experience this transformation and be kind of be guided through this process. Because it's something to just go out and do it yourself, but it's something to have immediate tasks, knowing exactly what to do, how to do it successfully, and then really focus on what do I do at the end to still be successful for the long term. Because it's not just a two-week experience where we shop the shelf. We want to implement this all the time, right? Because it's the shop method and we can use the shop method all the time. So if you're listening to this and you want to try this out, we're we're hosting a brand new experience and it's called the Pantry Payday. It's a two-week experience where I'm gonna walk you step by step through that first part of the shop method and show you how to save at least$300 in just two weeks. So here's what it's gonna look like. You're gonna get all the resources that you need. You're gonna get the meal plans, you're gonna get the pantry inventory checklist, you're gonna get the accountability that's important, and you're gonna get the community that comes along with this. We're gonna walk you through every step of the way. And then we're also gonna do a bunch of fun prizes as well for being engaged and doing this with us. Again, we're offering this to our Money Mom Club members who are a part of our community already, but I want to allow anyone who isn't in the Money Mom Club yet or who isn't ready to take that plunge to just get a small taste of what can happen over a two-week period. So we're starting this experience next Monday, November 3rd. And I would love for you to join us. It's easy, it's empowering, and it's a really easy way to get an extra$300 in your bank account for the holidays or whatever you may need that$300 for without giving up dietary restrictions, without giving up time. I promise you you're gonna save time by doing this challenge and by still keeping all of your health priorities in check. Whether you want to eat organic or your gluten or dairy-free, you can absolutely have those same priorities and still be able to save the$300 that we're going to save you in the in the two weeks. Now, normally this experience is gonna be$97, but because you are listening to this episode, we are going to give you a coupon code to make it only$27. So you're gonna get 70% off when you use the code payday at checkout. It's really easy. P P A Y D A Y. Use the code payday at checkout. We're gonna have the link below in the show notes so you can go join us. If you want to just go straight to the URL, it's www.heyrachelkoons.com forward slash pantrypayday. And you can use that code payday to make it only$27. Because here's the truth: you don't have to earn extra money to feel secure. You don't have to go out and get a job. You just have to learn how to keep more of what you already have. And pantry payday is going to help you take the first step to doing that. So go to that URL. You can get the link in the show notes and join us today. We'll get you into the community. We'll make sure you're all set up for success. And I can't wait to see you there. We start next week, November 3rd. Okay, that's all I have for you today. Go out, start shopping the shelf, join us in Pantry Pay Day, and I'll see you next week.

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Rachel Coons

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