Sunday, March 1, 2009

The Game.

I'm joining the game. What game, you ask? The coupon game. I have always marvelled at people who swore by coupon shopping and told their amazing money saving stories. I wanted to be one of them but had no idea where to start. In the last week I have been to 2 couponing classes. The first one wanted you to PAY for their service...no thanks! But the second class was taught by a couple of girls that I know. They were simply teaching people how to get started and do it successfully. I was skeptical. But when I asked them what they spent on food for the month, and they both agreed that they could feed their families of four, and more importantly store food, for less than $250 a month. I though, "Okay, clearly there is something magical going on here that I must try."

So now I will begin. I subscribed to the paper (I don't just get one, I now get FOUR Sunday papers, as is recommended). I'm going to organize, clip, wait for the sales, and see if I can figure this out. I made my subscription for 13 weeks. I'm giving this 3 months to work. If it does, I just spent the best $50 of my life. If it doesn't, I will promptly cancel my subscription, cut my losses, and return to my depressing $500-$600 monthly grocery bill. I added links to the side of my blog for the coupon sites I will be using to get me started. If you have any tips (Val) please send them my way.

4 comments:

The Marshall Family said...

I had a coupon experience this week (that I keep meaning to blog about). I want to start doing it too! So, let me know if you find great deals and I will pass any along to you!

shellydinger said...

WE must think alike. For the month of march I vowed to cut our grocery bill of 475 down to 250 - and not starve. I went to 4 stores this weekend (and got killer deals). I use couponmom.com (although this week I just shopped sales) and with her there is no coupon clipping individual coupons and not a lot of work. All the stores out here double coupons, but you don't need 2 of them - they just scan all of them twice. I'm gonna call you, we need to discuss.

Anonymous said...

Now that there's only two of us, it's not worth all the work you are going through, but when I had 7 kids--5 boys who ate like two or three people each--I did the coupon thing with several newspapers and web sites, etc. It actually did save quite a bit of money.

Val said...

Wow! I'm so proud of you! I have so many tips I could write a book! I don't think you will be disappointed with all of your newspaper subscriptions. I also spend about $250/month on food ($50 of that is long term food storage) and my pantry is stuffed!