A Whole New World

My eyes have been opened to a whole new world in the past week. All thanks to my husband who was watching a money saving show on the food network. As you all probably know, by my previous posts, we are cutting back on spending $ in major ways. I have found a new and very addicting way to save $$$.

COUPONING! (I don't know if this is a real word...but it is now!)

Okay, I am sure many of you are thinking the same thing I used to think about coupons. 25 cents here, 50 cents there- maybe $1.00 every once in awhile. It's not really worth my time or energy. But IT IS SO WORTH IT!

Let me give you an example. 2 days ago I went to Wal-Mart and bought 2 boxes of honey bunches of oat (choc. kind) cereal, 1 glade spray and 1 pizza. I only paid $3.40 for all of it. I could have paid less, but I didn't have a coupon for the pizza :<(. I had 2, $2.00 off coupons for the cereal. They were $1.98 each. So I got them both free! The glade spray was 97 cents and I had a $1.00 off coupon for it, so it was free also. The only thing I paid for was the pizza!

Coupons, coupons, coupons. Where do I get them? There are a few ways to get coupons.
1. Newspaper (if there are really good coupons, buy a couple or steal coupons from family/friends)

2. Online - there are tons of online coupons. My $2.00 off coupons for the cereal I got FREE were from online. You can print them out also. I'll put a link on the bottom of my blog.

3. In store- Lots of times stores will have their own coupons, Walgreens, CVS, Target, Kroger. Sometimes the coupons are in the ads, sometimes they are on the item and sometimes they are on your reciept. (yesterday I found a $1.50 off swimmers diapers coupon on the box at Target. The diapers were already on sale for $9.99, plus I had a $1.50 off coupon already from the paper- plus the $1.50 off coupon on the box!)

4. E-bay- Believe it or not, you can buy coupons on E-bay! Why pay for coupons? Because you can buy specific coupons in large quantities for items you use everyday and want to stock up on. For example- I just bought 15, $2.00 off 1 Garnier shampoo or conditioner coupons on e-bay. I paid about $3.50 for the coupons. This week CVS has garnier shampoo/cond. on sale for 1.99, with my 2.00 off coupon, I get them FREE! Time to STOCK UP!

5. All You magazine from Wal-Mart. The mag. is about $1.99 and in it are about 25 coupons. A lot of $1.00 off coupons.

Okay... Can you see how much I have gotten in to this over the past week? I have done a lot of research/reading online and there is so much out there. Here are a few of my favorite websites/blogs currently on this topic:

moneysavingmom.com (I have a link to this on my blog-)This is my favorite!
coupons.com
thegrocerygame.com (This is awesome, you can sign up for a 4 week trial for $1. More about this website tomorrow)

So... if I haven't convinced you yet that coupons are the way to go... SEND ME YOUR COUPONS! Or, just check back and read my next blog. :<)