Saturday, February 4, 2012

A week of couponing and price checking

This past week with the couponing has been hard. Our week has come unraveled and I would be lying if I said we had been perfect on using discounts and coupons for everything. We have had to grab something to eat a few times and I didn’t have a coupon or discount for every time- although we have tried to eat at places that cost significantly less then I would have spent if we were not trying to save money, like this very shabby little Vietnamese restaurant we haven’t visits in ages where the cost is very reasonable. I am not going to dwell on my discounting failure though; instead I would like to talk about the things I’ve learned this week.


Due diligence:

I’ve always just assumed that things are cheaper where we have always gotten them, because once upon a time I price checked them. Costco was one of those places. We’ve always bought giant bags of Iams dog food from Costco because it was less. I found out though Walmart actually has food for less if I order it into my store and use a $3.00 off coupon. More due diligence though, had me looking at generic labels and comparing. Kirkland dog food seemed to have the same ingredients as the branded food, and as we opened up the bag it looked exactly the same. We will be saving about $18 dollars a month.

We also found this month eggs were less at Fred Meyer then Costco with a coupon. I was really proud of my husband who went to pick up these eggs and walked in with his coupons in hand and his head held high.

We also signed up for the Target Red Card debit card after looking into it and realizing it was really worth the deal. I had always planned to look into it, but never have. I shop there anyway so I might as well save 5% on my purchases. We needed things like deodorant, kitchen cleaner, and shampoo. Just having them route the purchase through my red card alone saved me $4.00 on my purchases today. It’s going to be extra appealing to me as I always hit target for clearance for clothing. An item at 70% off is now going to be 75% off and I’m okay with that as I’ve been dressing myself (and my family) almost exclusively with Target clearance for a while now. There is always a risk that I’ll shop there more now that I have this card, but I’m already a pretty loyal Target shopper, and pretty thrifty so I'm not really worried.

Shopping today for food was also successful with a $10 off $75 at Safeway, as well as some great deals for buy one get one free deals on things like sausages my daughter will eat, a sale on milk, and Chex for 1.52 each. I love watching the club card, and coupons reduce my total down, chipping away at it little by little until we saved 49% total on our grocery bill and over $120!

Finally we found some really great savings at Michael’s craft stores. Between 40% off coupons, BOGO sales, and a $10 off of $30 coupon we managed to spend money for a few upcoming art projects for a savings of 50%.

Over all I’m happy with my savings this month as it’s been over $200 in our household expenses so far this month. We are still learning to save money, and still finding ways to make our money go further but having Josh start to pay more attention to price, examining coupons and looking for red clearance stickers has been the greatest achievement of all!