Saving

I usually only write about the boys because Andy makes me feel dumb about this whole blog thing, but this time I am going to write about what's going on with me. Also, I feel like this is something someone may need right now just like how it came into my life.

A year ago I had no idea what our finances were like or how much money I spent, but then Andy became very concerned about our money spending. But God works wonders! Our church has MOPS group (Mother's of Preschoolers) and last Sept/Oct they had a lady speak about couponing. Well, I have never couponed because I thought who cares about saving .50, but this lady had tons of coupon tricks and rules that I had never heard of. After hearing how she gets like $200 worth of groceries for $20, I thought I have got to do this! That month after hearing her I couponed some, but did not have a lot of coupons yet. I tracked our grocery, warehouse, and eating out spending that month and it totaled over $900! Yes, that does include diapers and anything else like paper towels, toilet paper, etc. After couponing for about 4 months I had cut the grocery bill down by over $300 and it still keeps going down! I was even interviewed by our local paper about milk prices one day while I was grocery shopping, because the lady saw me stocking up on yogurt and saw my ginormous coupon notebook. By the way milk is SO much cheaper at BJ's, Sam's, Costco, Walgreen's than it is at the grocery store! My best savings was during a Harris Teeter triple coupon shop where I got $65 worth of groceries for only $2! Now how can anyone hear that and not want to know how they too can coupon!

Now that I have gotten good at the grocery savings thing (I still need to work on the Target, clothes, kids savings thing, which is in progress) I can't understand why more people don't coupon! I really see this as something God brought into our lives to relieve stress on our marriage and provide for us. We have so many free things or things the grocery store paid us to take that we give food away every month to our church's food bank ministry. It does take some time to cut and organize the coupons, but I look at it as my job. I am a stay at home mom and my job should be to spend as little possible on what we need so that we can pay our bills and save money for emergencies or college tuition for the kids. Even if you work full time you can still find time to do this like when you are watching TV or on Sunday afternoons while the kids are napping. Those are the times I usually cut and organize coupons. The coupon lady's website is http://www.smartspendingrescoures.com/ if anyone is interested in saving lots of money every month!

Here is a picture of my coupon notebook/organizer. I take this with me when I grocery shop that way when there is an unadvertised sale and I have acoupon I can just pull it out. It is also very easy to find your coupons. They are in sections according to what they are like, beverages, baked goods, etc.