New Coupon Update

Well, hello to my new and old friends of this blog. I hope you are all doing well and having a good time with your coupons. If you are new to the coupon idea I have some new thoughts that might help you out a little. If you have been doing it a while you may already do some of this but then again, it may be new to you too! Here is hoping that these little insights help you out a bit.

So I have been a part of the REAL coupon scene for a couple months now. My CVS receipt shows that I have saved over $200 since January. WOOHOOOOO! In doing this I have tweaked my system just a bit in order to make things more time effective. Here is what I have learned, figured out or come to the conclusion of.

1. CVS and Walgreens are now the only place where I buy health and beauty products, cleaning products and paper things (TP, paper towels, etc). Pretty much, if you wait and buy them on sale when you have coupons you will never again pay more than a buck for most of that stuff. It is important to start out by asking yourself how much you are willing to pay for something. I am no longer willing to pay more than $.50 for toothpaste, $.99 for deodorant (men's or women's), or $1 for shampoo or conditioner. Halls cough drops should be $.50 and no more for a bag. If you start watching prices you will find that they do go low enough for you to purchase these things at these prices with coupons. When you have the chance to buy these things at these prices, scoop them up.

2. CVS (thank you Al for this suggestion) has a "bag tag" that you can purchase for $.99 or $.59 online. You attach this tag to your reusable bag and they scan it each time you use it (only one time per day). When you use it 4 times you get a $1 Extra Care Buck to be used on your next purchase. Basically, they pay you $.25 each time you use a reusable bag. SWEET!

3. Here is where I'm different from some sites. I believe you should cut out all the coupons each week for products you use. The reason I believe this is because sometimes things are on the clearance table due to company logo changes, being close to expiration date, etc. These are not advertised prices and will not show up on southernsavers.com so if you don't have your coupons with you, a savings will be missed. For example; the other day I was at Winn Dixie. They had a cart full of Oral B toothbrushes marked down to $.99 and I had $.75 off coupons. Yep, you do the math. If I had kept my coupons at home in the mailers I would have missed out on that great deal. I say, take the time to cut your coupons, organize them and always take them to the store with you so that you will never be caught saying, "geez, I had a coupon for that".

4. Another thing I do a little different from the sites. There are a few key items that we ALWAYS use. TP, Paper Towels, baby wipes, health and beauty items, etc. I know that these things are on a 6 week sale cycle and will be on sale again later in the future however, I don't know what David's job will look like in the future. With gas prices going up and the prediction of clothing prices going up I would like to make it so that I have extra cash on hand later for those items. Here is what I'm doing. I am making a SMALL stock pile of those items now. I figured out how much of each item I would need to make it a year (usually one bottle or one tube a month) and I'm stocking up. Just like you save money for a year of no job, I am saving household items for a year of no job. NO, my house will NOT look like one of those houses on TLC where they are taking the garage for storage but I am budgeting an amount of cabinet space for these items. When I hit the number I want to have, I stop buying that product. I have officially stocked everything I wanted with the exception of baby wipes. I now do NOT have to buy any of these products in my weekly shopping. Here is how this is helping us. Last week my grocery total was $35 for 4 people. Yep, you read that right! I had to buy some meat and staple items like milk. I have everything else that I need here in the house. For the next few months, our grocery bills will be this low. This allows us to choose where we put our extra money. We can sink it into credit card bills OR put it into savings for our year supply of money. Either way, this money saved is helping us right now to prepare for tomorrow. Jenny on southernsavers.com suggests to only buy for 6 weeks and if that is all you have space for that is wonderful however, this method is showing us such HUGE results, this is what I will stick with. Do what is best for your pantry and your storage space. Don't go crazy and take over your kiddo's closets, just be smart about the items you choose to stock up on and go from there.

5. I have a new method for organizing my coupons. I had some baseball card pages that I put into a binder. Each page is a row in the grocery store (or a category).



I have a kid page with diapers, wipes, etc. A dairy page, meat page, etc. Most of the coupons can be trimmed down to fit in the slots however, if you have coupons that are too big, just fold them in half so you can see the picture and store it that way. (Picture two) My binder has pockets for my store envelopes, pen, grocery list, and weekly ads. Everything is together in one place and everything is VERY easy to find. Since I have been using this method I have caught several deals that I would have otherwise missed due to inability of finding my coupons quickly while shopping with the kids. The back of my binder has notebook pages and clear plastic page protectors for recipe cards and my menu. If I have cards with me or the menu written out with foods to watch for in the same place as my coupons then I really do have EVERYTHING together. One binder for all my grocery and cooking needs.:-)



Most everything else that I do is written in my two previous posts. It is amazing to hear from you guys about your savings. Please keep bragging to me about how much you save. It is a celebration that I love to join in on. The more we save now the better off we will be later. Thanks for any comments or ideas that you have learned. I look forward to hearing your success stories! Have a wonderful night!