Time to show you what I got for my $20 coupon practice this week:
Sorry, the photo is so dark, all this stuff is now hiding from little eyes until Christmas.
The best deal by far this week was that I only paid $1 each for those Toy Story Operation games, which were regularly $15.99 at Target. Toys R Us has them advertised in their weekly ad this week for $1, but of course, they sold out in no time, so I took the ad to Target & they did a price match for me at the customer service desk. They had a limit of 3, but that was fine with me because I’m not trying to be a hoarder, I just wanted some Christmas gifts. It’d also be great to donate to Toys for Tots or if your office or church does an angel tree. It was a lot of fun to watch the register total change from $48 to just $3 plus tax.
The wrapping paper I got with my $5 off a $10 purchase coupon from liking Hallmark on Facebook. They are out of coupons on FB now, but I got the same coupon in my latest issue of Rachel Ray magazine, FYI. The wrapping paper is normally $5/roll, but they had a buy one get one for 99 cents sale, so I bought 4 plus a roll of tape and paid a little over $9 after tax.
I also bought a DVD of Marley & Me, which was on sale at our F.Y.E. in the mall for $9.99, and I had a $3 manufacturer coupon I printed off the internet a few weeks ago, making it $6.99.
So I spent $3 at Target, $9 at Hallmark, and $7 at F.Y.E.
I also saved more than $37 off our grocery bill & took the total down from $108 to just $70 and change.
I am finding that I now have too many coupons to just stuff in an envelope in my purse like I have been doing. It was taking way too much time at the store to dig through my envelope every time I found an item and wanted to pull out the matching coupon.
I’m going to have to start a binder, and I found a free download of one I think will work well for me here.
It’s a little discouraging that I’m not saving nearly as much as those women on TV, but 1/3 of the grocery bill is pretty decent, I guess, especially considering I only use coupons I can print for free off the internet. I find it makes me feel better if I go home and use our online banking system to transfer the amount of money I saved into our savings account.
I’m going to start doing this every week with the money I save using coupons at the grocery store. I can’t afford to do it every time I save in any store, like Friday when I spent $70 at Kohl’s, but saved over $175, but I figure with the grocery money I would have spent it anyway if I wasn’t couponing, so I’m not going to miss it out of our weekly budget & it will be a good way to build up our savings. If I can save about the same amount every week, $35-$40, that will be an extra $150 a month, or $1,800 a year, in our savings account. (Sidenote: If you start doing that when your child is a baby, by the time they are 18 you’d have over $32,000 set aside, not even accounting for interest. Just saying. Coupons might just be our college fund.)
Curious about all of my couponing adventures?
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