Couponing Questions Answered

For those of you still on the fence about couponing (or scared to get near that fence, like I was) I'd like to answer a couple big questions I had before starting...

Q: Is the newspaper subscription even worth it?  
I mean c'mon, you are paying for coupons!

A: The short and sweet: YES!!!

I pay $14.62 a month for three newspapers. When I first started couponing, I wondered if I would be able to save enough money to make it worth the price. Let me give you an example of how easy it is to save that much, and more:

Yesterday I cut my coupons, checked out Krazy Coupon Lady's blog to see if there were any great deals I should hit up, made a quick list, and got my coupons ready. This morning Landon and I went out and got $35 worth of items for less than $2.00. (The cost of tax.) And it's only the beginning of the month. And as you can see, we didn't even get a ton of stuff. We went to Target and Walgreens, at 8:00am (right when they open). That's pretty vital. If you want the really good deals you have to be the first one there. Now I realize not everyone has an alarm clock that wakes them up at 5 in the morning, thanks Landon, but for us, it works. We also live in Mormonville so all the crazy couponing moms don't go shopping till Monday. In other states, by Monday, all the deals would probably be gone.

We were also extra lucky this morning. The lady behind us at Target happened to be buying a ton of these cars from the movie Cars 2. Landon saw them and flipped out, of course. You know the toddler philosophy, what's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine. So, as I'm trying to drag a screaming, flailing Landon away from the check stand, the lady gave Landon a car and told the cashier to ring up an extra. She insisted of course, and Landon left the store a very happy boy.

Q: I want to get started, but not commit to a newspaper subscription. Is that possible?

A: YES!!! The Glade spray and Tums were bought entirely with coupons printed from sites online. I looked at Money Saving Mom's blog this morning and found the links to the coupons needed, making those items free. I probably use half printed, half newspaper coupons when shopping. And remember, when printing coupons, you can print two of each per computer.

Hope that helps some of you!

You Win Some, You Lose Some

If my life were made into a movie, hands down, this would be the tagline. And I like it. So simple, yet so true. Being the end of March, I feel obligated to report my budgeting. And yes, I realize it will probably bore most of you, but then again, thankfully you are not obligated to read it. :)

I've hit the point where couponing has become a game. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it can be stressful. But in the end, when I walk out of a store with a bag full of goodies that I literally payed pennies for, it's all worth it. The first two pictures below are examples of that. I've been doing awesome in grocery shopping too. My goal was $400 for the month and in March I spend $396. That's right, baby. I DID IT. The money we spent eating out was down to $150. ($30 less than last month.) I meticulously tracked where all our money went, had a friend help me improve my budgeting sheet even more, and when it all comes down to it, I realized I'm really not that bad with money after all. The problem is, there seems to be some unwritten law of the universe that states: If ever a person earns slightly more money than usual, some unanticipated expense must take place shortly thereafter to compensate for the increase in income.

Last month it was $150 for renter's insurance.
This month it was $700 in medical bills.
Next month something will probably go wrong with the car... (knock on wood.)
You win some, you lose some.

Storage bins. My new obsession. The bathroom drawers and cupboards were driving me wild, so this past week I took on, and completed the task of really organizing them. I pulled everything out, then divided it all into bags so I would know how many bins to buy. (At this point I got side tracked for a few days so all those bags were thrown back under the sink, making it exponentially hard to find anything.) Now that it's all finished, I find myself opening the cupboards to stare at the beautiful bins. That's not too weird... right?

Last year I was able to have a big beautiful garden, on an empty lot in the neighborhood (along with 24 other families). A while ago, the owner of the lot was informed that a neighbor was unhappy with the "unsightly nature of the garden" in previous years. I called up this neighbor (since I was organizing the garden this year.) Listened to her rant about how horrible the garden is, and how much she'd prefer a lot full of weeds. I'm simply amazed by some people. Since the owner doesn't want to upset the neighbors, the lot is now unavailable and I will be trying my hand at container gardening. And there you have it folks, you win some, you lose some.

Determined

Thank you, everyone, for your words of advice regarding budgeting and couponing. I gleaned many good ideas from your comments. I am determined to succeed at this. So, here are the steps I've taken thus far to cut my grocery bill in half...

I went through and tracked every dollar in a budget. Been doing this for a while, but I really sat down and revised it. And I know, maybe it's a little weird that I've put all our expenses on the web, but blogging about this journey makes me feel much more accountable for succeeding at it. Each category under expenses has its own column to the right where I will keep track of everything spent. I've set it up with equations so that when I add in our income each month, (which is variable since Scott works freelance) then we can easily see our profit after subtracting the expenses.

Next, I made a list of all the gluten and dairy free items we buy. In the next few days, I'm going to take the list to each store and find out where I can buy them for the least amount of money.

Finally, I made another list (can you tell I'm a list person?) of all the meals and snacks we eat. This will make it a million times easier for me to plan dinner because I will know where to look for ideas. (Instead of searching the internet for random new recipes.) Included on the list are "cheap" meals like spaghetti, breakfast for dinner, tacos, soups, and sandwiches. This will also be helpful because I can't even count all the times that I've wandered around the house opening cupboards, the fridge, freezer, trying to find a good snack to eat. Now I have them listed!

Every morning I try to look at my local couponing blog to see if there are any freebies. This morning I found that a new coupon for $2.00 off Renu Contact Solution was available online and it didn't exclude trial size. I ran to Target, and picked up the last four for FREE. I had a really nice cashier who told me I could also get a couple candy bars since I technically had an overage of "coupon money." I just had to pay the tax, $0.48.

Next step: Plan a grocery trip that doesn't involve spending the whole month's grocery budget in one outing! :)