After a long winter of silence I decided it’s time to post on my blog again. As always I tend to be focused on food, and spending money. With the cost of food starting to go up, and the speculation of fuel related inflation to all food items getting worse around June, I decided it’s time to start saving money. Determined that there had to be a way to get more bang for my buck, I’ve decided that it’s high time to start clipping coupons. Let me fist explain, I’m the kind of girl who has never really used coupons (at least not for groceries, I’m a sucker for the Bed Bath and Beyond coupons.) Who will get a save .50 coupon on package of something I buy often, and throw it in the trash thinking “Whatever, it is worth .50 cents to me to not have to lug this thing around.” Even if I know in a month I’m going to buy that item again. Recently though I realized that coupons are only a part of a much bigger picture and it’s really all about timing. I’ve always been quite the sale shopper. I wait until things are on sale to purchase them, and if something else is on sale, I’m okay with switching brands to save a little bit of money. But what if I could hit a sale AND use a coupon? Suddenly my .50 coupon, mixed with a dollar sale turns into $1.50 an item sale. So this weekend I decided that it was time to start this couponing endeavor. It started out with a dog food coupon at Costco. Nearly $40.00 bags of dog food with a $10.00 coupon limit of 2. But we went 2 days in a row because we had a little bit of extra money that we could spend on dog food this month, and are totally sure the dogs will eat it. We have over two months of dog food in our storage bin, and saved a bit of money in the process. Today was my first attempt at grocery store couponing. I’m not saying I’m any good about it, but I saved some money, and saving money in any capacity means I’m not bad at it either. Today the coupon shopping took place at an Albertsons store, because the Sunday paper had a double coupon ad, and an offer that if you buy 3 boxes of cereal that you get 2 gallons of milk free. On top of that I had a $1.00 coupon for the brand of cereal that I intended to purchase and a double coupon for the cereal as well. I also had $1.00 off soy milk, and another double coupon. I also had a coupon for lunch meat, and the same applied with double coupon day. All in all I walked away with a voucher for free milk on my next visit worth a $4.00 future milk purchase and I’m looking grand total of 48.1%! Total money saved this week clipping coupons: - 51.70 less $2.00 newspaper = 49.70 in total savings. I have to be honest here, not all of these savings will be realized this month, as the dogs will not eat all of the dog food this month, but even divided up between two months that is still a grand total of 24.85 realized this month, and 24.85 in food will not have to buy next month. I think this will be a money saver I continue to work on. I have more coupons to use, and am planning another trip tomorrow, to another store in order to finish my grocery shopping.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
First Weekend of being a Scissor Saver!
After a long winter of silence I decided it’s time to post on my blog again. As always I tend to be focused on food, and spending money. With the cost of food starting to go up, and the speculation of fuel related inflation to all food items getting worse around June, I decided it’s time to start saving money. Determined that there had to be a way to get more bang for my buck, I’ve decided that it’s high time to start clipping coupons. Let me fist explain, I’m the kind of girl who has never really used coupons (at least not for groceries, I’m a sucker for the Bed Bath and Beyond coupons.) Who will get a save .50 coupon on package of something I buy often, and throw it in the trash thinking “Whatever, it is worth .50 cents to me to not have to lug this thing around.” Even if I know in a month I’m going to buy that item again. Recently though I realized that coupons are only a part of a much bigger picture and it’s really all about timing. I’ve always been quite the sale shopper. I wait until things are on sale to purchase them, and if something else is on sale, I’m okay with switching brands to save a little bit of money. But what if I could hit a sale AND use a coupon? Suddenly my .50 coupon, mixed with a dollar sale turns into $1.50 an item sale. So this weekend I decided that it was time to start this couponing endeavor. It started out with a dog food coupon at Costco. Nearly $40.00 bags of dog food with a $10.00 coupon limit of 2. But we went 2 days in a row because we had a little bit of extra money that we could spend on dog food this month, and are totally sure the dogs will eat it. We have over two months of dog food in our storage bin, and saved a bit of money in the process. Today was my first attempt at grocery store couponing. I’m not saying I’m any good about it, but I saved some money, and saving money in any capacity means I’m not bad at it either. Today the coupon shopping took place at an Albertsons store, because the Sunday paper had a double coupon ad, and an offer that if you buy 3 boxes of cereal that you get 2 gallons of milk free. On top of that I had a $1.00 coupon for the brand of cereal that I intended to purchase and a double coupon for the cereal as well. I also had $1.00 off soy milk, and another double coupon. I also had a coupon for lunch meat, and the same applied with double coupon day. All in all I walked away with a voucher for free milk on my next visit worth a $4.00 future milk purchase and I’m looking grand total of 48.1%! Total money saved this week clipping coupons: - 51.70 less $2.00 newspaper = 49.70 in total savings. I have to be honest here, not all of these savings will be realized this month, as the dogs will not eat all of the dog food this month, but even divided up between two months that is still a grand total of 24.85 realized this month, and 24.85 in food will not have to buy next month. I think this will be a money saver I continue to work on. I have more coupons to use, and am planning another trip tomorrow, to another store in order to finish my grocery shopping.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment