My Coupon World

First, we're sorry for the lack of blogging. There's no excuse, really, except not a whole lot to write about! The Haiti blog was important we thought, and with some recent developments since then, Michael and I might be going to Haiti on a missions trip in June...but more to come on that later.

I titled this blog "My Coupon World" because that is what I feel like I have been in. In the beginning of January I attended a coupon workshop (yes, there are such things!) put on by Cathedral of Praise Church here in North Charleston. I went with the encouragement of my friend, Rhea, who exclaimed she had saved $60 on her first visit after a workshop in November. Those words were like music to my ears and I just couldn't pass up this opportunity to save money. For how thrifty I am, I am actually pretty surprised that I haven't gotten into couponing before now. And what I was shocked to learn from the workshop is that couponing is way more than clipping from Sunday's paper and storing them in a coupon container...

The whole goal behind extreme couponing is stockpiling coupons to therefore stockpile groceries. I am not too keen on having a pantry stacked with groceries, but it's nice to have a few extras lying around. It takes a while to stock up on the coupons, but after just four weeks I am feeling pretty good about what I've collected. It was suggested to buy 2 Sunday papers to get 2 copies of each coupon, but I've been fine with getting one Sunday paper and 2 on "full" weeks (weeks with more than 2 coupon inserts). The way to save the most money is to buy mainly (or even only) what is on sale and use coupons to make that discount steeper. I would say about 60% of my coupons come online, too, from the following websites: http://www.southernsavers.com/, http://www.hotcouponworld.com/ and http://www.coupons.com/. The first website, Southern Savers, will pair the weekly ads each week with non-expired coupons that have come out in the last few weeks...it virtually does the matching for you! If you are interested in couponing, you'll probably want to start here.

Heres an example: if a box of Cheerios is on sale for Buy One Get One Free, you can use two coupons with the purchase of both items (essentially using 2 coupons for the item you are buying). Also, for many grocery stores they double coupons up to a certain amount. Publix doubles coupons $.50 and below, and Harris Teeter doubles coupons $.99 and below (but only allow 20 coupons per visit). So if you have 2 coupons for Cheerios that are $.50 each, you are actually getting $1 off per coupon ($2 off) and with B1G1 free for a box of Cheerios that is normally $3.40, you are getting 2 boxes and only paying $1.40. Pretty good!

I organize the coupons in a trapper keeper-like binder with baseball card sleeves where each coupon goes. The pages are filed by category which makes them easy to find. I then make my grocery list based on what's on sale, NOT on what I feel like cooking that week. This was a hard transition (for Michael too!), but it's been fun coming home with what I bought and THEN figuring out how to get creative with cooking. Lastly, I put the coupons I am going to use in an envelope and take them to the store with me. I am a little tainted though; I can hardly buy anything now unless I have a coupon!

After 4 weeks worth of grocery shopping, we've saved $221.33 and not sacrificed health or taste...it can be done! I think we could do even better than this, but for just starting to stockpile the coupons and groceries, I am pretty pleased with this amount.

Here are some snapshots of the craziness:

Day 1 of couponing:Michael's been in on the clipping and using of the coupons too: This past Saturday's trip...we saved $72 on all of this!The receipts of savings from this week:

If you are seriously interested in couponing, please call me and I can walk you through it some more!

-LB