I now have a blog and use coupons!

Let's see how long I can keep this up. I think I am starting this mainly to document my saving/spending habits as I learn the confusing world of couponing. I am hoping that by keeping a blog it will help me to be more accountable and stick with it. This post is kind of long, it is me rambling on about how I came to become so addicted to saving money with coupons. So if you don't care how I got started couponing, this is your chance to stop reading.

I have tried to use coupons off and on. I even bought the Tulsa World newspaper for several weeks in a row when I first became a stay at home mom. Sometimes I would find the time to cut out a bunch of coupons of things I thought I would use. Then, I would go to the store (mostly Wal-Mart because I wrongfully assumed they were always the cheapest at everything) and find that the "Great Value" brand was still cheaper than using the coupon for the name brand. So I ended up with a bunch of cut out coupons that kept expiring.

With a newborn in the house, it can be quite a challenge to find the time/energy to do much of anything. When I did get some time to myself I wanted to spend it sleeping or relaxing, not cutting out coupons I probably wouldn't use! That meant that sometimes I wouldn't even go through coupon inserts until the coupons were about to expire. So I had coupons and coupon inserts and newspapers coming out my ears it seems.

So I gave up. I continued shopping at Wal-Mart buying Great Value brand everything I could. I thought I was saving money. I have a grocery budget of $50 per week (I shop with cash, so I can't go over). I thought I was really doing good when I occasionally had enough cash leftover that we could order pizza on Saturday night.

But that was then. I have since stopped shopping at Wal-Mart altogether. I am starting to learn how to use coupons. I have saved enough in the past several weeks, that last week, I did not even need to spend ANY of my $50 on groceries. Instead, we spent half of it on clippers for Brian so I can learn to cut his hair. Let me just say, his hair is REALLY short in the back right now! I also have to say, that was HIS idea, not mine!

I have started saving by shopping mainly at two different stores in my area, Reasor's (my favorite) and Warehouse Market. I am learning which things are cheaper at which store. Since I got frustrated with coupons in the past and quit "wasting" my money on the Sunday paper, I was just trying to find the best deals using printable coupons from sites like coupons.com smartsource and redplum. That works at Reasor's but unfortunately Warehouse Market does not take printable coupons.

A couple of weeks ago, my sister, Jessi, talked me into buying the paper and trying to shop at CVS. She recommended I check out Southern Savers. I went on that website that night and could not believe all the deals at CVS that week. I ended up going to CVS twice, spending $15.49 and saving $89.48. That is an 85% savings! I could not believe how many things you can get at CVS for FREEE just by using coupons and shopping their sales! Things we all use, like toothpaste and deoderant! I only wished at that point that I had still been buying the Sunday paper, because if I had been, I would have been able to get alot more things AND save alot more money. I decided from that point on to start getting the paper again.

Here is what I got my first week "CVSing"


I can't remember exactly how I did all my transactions to end up with those amounts, and there was some confusion. You see, I had everything worked out on paper before I went into the store of how it was going to work out (the order of transactions, etc). I had everything figured out, including tax, right to the penny. Then, I went in there and accidentally bought the wrong thing first! That created alot of confusion and me, just beginning at all this got somewhat frustrated. Thankfully, there was a manager there, who walked me through it, step by step (not only did he let me ring up like 6 different transactions, he HELPED me figure out how to save the most money and even gave me some bonus extra care bucks! He was totally awesome).
I am hoping that in the future, I can use this blog to show you all exactly how I save with sales, coupons, and ECBs (or RRs if I can figure out Walgreens!)

I did not make it to CVS last week. The closest one to me is approx. 20 miles away and there were only a couple of deals that looked good to me, that I needed coupons from last week's Redplum insert in the Sunday paper. I bought TWO Tulsa World papers for $2.00 each and discovered, to my horror, that TW does not get RedPlum anymore! Bummer. Now I know I need to buy the Daily Oklahoman. Yesterday, I bought 2 Daily Oklahomans and 2 Tulsa Worlds. So now I have lots of coupons to get started with.

I think this week I am going to try to make it to CVS and Walgreens and see how much I can save there. I also cut out all of my about to expire coupons from my All You magazines and I am going to attempt saving money at Homeland (a grocery store about 20 minutes away that doubles coupons). I have never been to Homeland before, and Walgreens Register Rewards/coupon policies confuse me so I am not sure how well I will do.

Hopefully I will have some pictures/savings to show you in the next few days! Now I gotta get to planning my lists!