The Zen of Saving Money

Wow, it has been quite a month and a half since my last posting. There is so much to talk about, however, much of it is response to the instant news cycle. I believe that the instant news cycle has been an extreme detriment to true knowledge, as it tends to be just response (sometime knee jerk) reaction. So, I will not be commenting on the latest tragedy in Arizona. Too much has been said by too many too quickly to even have a clue what they are talking about. Speculation has taken the place of information from news sources. I may however speak to the larger issues that the Arizona tragedy brought up, but for those who have no interest in my political ranting I will reserve that for another post which will be titled accordingly so you may ignore it if you so choose.

On to the subject of the title of my post….Saving Money.

I like so many others saw the TLC show “Extreme Couponing” and was fascinated by the savings those folks were getting with coupons. I was however, not interested in "stockpiling." So, I looked up the website 918couponqueen.com, knowing that the information would be more local, and I could focus on the things I buy anyway.

So, last Sunday I started clipping. I had been saying that I needed to find a hobby that I could do while watching TV to make more effective use of my time. So that is when I clip and organize.

Luckily my wife watched the show with me so she is all for doing this if it saves our budget some. So, for that reason when I find a coupon online that is good I am able to register both her and I for said coupons and double up on the number of items I can save on.

To give an idea of where I came from.... There are 7 adults and 1 child in my household. I usually shop at Sam's once a month and try to stock up for the month on non-perishables (and some fresh stuff that will last.) Then for regularly purchased items (milk, bread, etc...) it was to Reasor’s and/or Walgreens I go. My average monthly expense for food w/o including any of our meals out is about $400-$600.

So last night we did our monthly big shopping trip, with our coupons.

We started at Target. I had received a baby catalogue from them earlier in the week which had a coupon for a $20 gift card if you created a registry (which is free to create by the way...) It just so happens we are expecting another grandchild, so we did that and got our $20. Then, thanks to the matchup provided by Brandi M I was able to pull coupons from my minimal collection and printed online and purchased Kashi cereal, Lean Cuisine meals, and Yoplait yogurt. And thanks to another poster I got my FREE Halls cough drops.

TARGET: Original Sale Prices = $68 ish
Cash after coupon and gift card = $9

Then we headed out to Reasor’s to stock up using our coupons combined with the 10 for $10 sale. Now here we also had to get a number of items that we did not have coupons for, after all we were stocking up for the month. However, we did get an entire dinning room table FULL of items, and I truly believe with the exception of things like milk, bread ect... everything we need for the month, and some stocking up on items that were extremely cheep.

REASORS: Original Sale Prices = $221
Cash after coupons = $173

TOTAL SAVINGS BASED ON COUPONS = $107
TOTAL SAVINGS BY COMBINING COUPONS AND SALES = $200-300


Yea, I'll never be doing my big shopping trips without my coupons again.

Clint