June/July Savings.....

Many of you are not sure if coupons and shopping the sales are the way to go...

Here are my totals. These are based on the week ending on the date listed. This also includes things such as tp, papertowels, shampoo, toothpaste, deoderant, etc and FOOD!


6/8
$ 107 spent
$ 30 saved
6/15
$ 45 spent
$ 7 Saved
6/22
$ 241 Spent
$ 61 saved
6/29
$ 103 Spent
$ 87 Saved
7/6
$ 81 Spent
$ 37 Saved
7/13
$ 105 Spent
$ 69 Saved
7/20
$ 101 Spent
$ 86 Saved
7/27
$ 41 Spent
$ 43 Saved

This last week was my best! I spent less than I actually saved!! This was 51% savings...

Since June 8th, I have saved $419.00! I wish I had started keeping track in April when I began my coupon adventure. Think of what this savings can do for your family's financial situation. We are using my grocery savings to of course compensate for the cost of gas, but I have also increased my monthly contribution to my retirement account due to this new way of shopping!

I am currently trying something called the grocery game. I plan on sharing my trial experiences with you in the next 2 weeks.

Another thing that has really helped us cut our expenses was for me to write down on an index card my grocery spending for the week. After each grocery visit, I would write down what I spent and keep a running total. Once I got close to my budget for that week, I forced myself to fix meals from our stockpile. I don't know about you but I always bring more food into the house when I actually have food. It is just not something that I feel like eating at the time!

To create your stockpile, the trick is to buy multiples of an item when it is at it's cheapest (using a coupon). So, you will never have to pay full price for that item when you run out. This really amazed me that this was possible. For example, I use to always buy generic cereal because I thought it was cheaper. Cereal in my opinion is so darn expensive. Well, a couple of weeks ago it was on sale at Kroger for $1.88 (name brand) and if you applied a coupon for a $1.00 off it was only .88cents a box! I was also able to get a few boxes for free because of my e coupon and a manufactures coupon.

I actually love grocery shopping now!! I love when I checkout and I see my total and then they enter my coupons and the price goes down and down and down....