Every few months or so the husband and I get down on ourselves and decide that we need to buckle down with our finances. To be honest with you, we are very blessed and have so much to be thankful for. We try to live not just below our means, but well below our means. We started listening to Dave Ramsey shortly after we got married and we have made every effort to follow his sound financial advice. As he says, it’s nothing complicated, just advice that your grandma would give you.
This doesn’t mean that we are perfect, though. We are far from it. We both like to shop and we both like nice things. We love to eat out, drink fancy coffee and download lots of ninety-nine cent songs. Oh, and we really love our smart phones and hi-tech gaming systems.
I’m sure most everyone has noticed that their grocery bills have creeped up recently. I have definitely noticed that I am spending more and more at Wal-Mart every week. Yesterday, one of my Facebook friends posted a picture of a bunch of items that she got from Walgreens for what seemed like a low price. I decided to check out my circulars from the Sunday newspaper to see if I could find any good deals.
Now, I have never watched the show about couponing. I am assuming that they combine store deals with coupons to get the most bang for their buck. My strategy for my first couponing session was to just find the best deals from either Wal-Mart, CVS or Walgreens and go to those stores to get the deals.
My first stop was CVS where I planned to buy two bottles of Pantene Pro-V and combine their store offer with a coupon from the paper. Alas, I was too late. The shelf had already been emptied of the specific bottles that the coupon was for. (should I have asked if they would honor coupon anyway or for a rain check?) The other deal that I wanted at CVS was seventy-nine cent two liter cokes. That was a very good deal. I bought five bottles. I usually pay around a buck twenty-five or more for Diet Pepsi. I also picked up two boxes of Kashi cereal for six dollars and then got an extra care buck from CVS, making the cereal only two-fifty each. My total bill was about ten bucks.
I then went to Wal-Mart. There, I got my meat, veggies, milk and the bulk of my shopping list. Shockingly, I only spent fifty-six dollars. My normal bill there is over one hundred most weeks. My last stop was Walgreens. Their flyer from yesterday had good coupons on eggs, tuna, tomato sauce, and foil. Also, they were running a sale on Starbucks coffee and Right Guard deodorant. My big score there was buy one, get one free on their store brand Zyrtec. Total bill there was about thirty dollars. So, total I spent about one hundred dollars this morning but I am sure that I got more than I normally would have.
Also, this morning I spent some time online researching coupon sites and blogs and also asked a friend how she does the coupon game. She said it’s kind of a pain at first but once you get the hang of it and your coupon pile starts getting bigger things start paying off. Here are a few links that I found helpful. Please share if you have any more advice!
http://www.smartmoney.com/spend/family-money/5-best-coupon-clipping-web-sites-23634/
Coffee and Diet Coke 