Lately, I find myself getting very excited about coupons. It’s obvious it’s rubbing off on my children when I hear them screaming…”look, a coupon!”. I’ve had a couple great shopping trips lately where I leave a store with bags of items and I didn’t spend anything, but instead, they gave me money! I remember a few months ago reading blogs about moms who were saving over 50% on their spending and how stores would pay them to shop…I thought “yeah, right”. Now, I’m the one doing it.
Now the other comment usually that comes to the table is that you end up buying a lot of junk or things you don’t need. And that can be the case…but you have to make choices to get the best bang for your buck for your household on great items you need. You might be surprised at some the coupons out there for healthy food. Recently, Food Lion had $1 off coupon you could use on fresh produce and there was an online printable coupon out there for 75 cents off of fresh pineapple to use at any store. There’s even $1 off coupons for gluten-free products here.
A couple weeks ago, I went to Rite Aid and left with two packages of Huggies diapers, organic lip balm, laundry detergent, and light bulbs. After coupons, they paid me almost $2 and I will be getting a nice rebate check from purchasing these items in a few days.
My two FAVORITE frugal blogs are Money Saving Mom and Southern Savers.
These ladies do a fanastic job keeping us informed about the best deals to be had. They both also have Facebook pages you can “fan” and keep up to date via your FB page.
If this is something you’d like to jump into…just take your time. Pick one or two stores to focus on. Rite Aid and CVS have become my favorite for lots of free household products. It does involve time, but there are great dividends. I’ve been at this about six months. I still have lots to learn, but I definitely feel that it is a worth the time and energy.
As a one-income family…this helps us to reach goals, like keeping momma home with the children, homeschooling, and working on our “debt snow-ball“. In addition to couponing, over the past few years, we’ve learned other money saving opportunities like growing our own food and preserving, eating foods that are “in-season”, using cloth diapers, harvesting deer and butchering it ourselves (thankfully Paul just got his first deer of the season a couple weeks ago), and buying in bulk when we have the chance. This past month we were able to purchase a couple of bushels apples from a nearby Amish community and we made homemade applesauce and canned some for this winter.
As a side note too, I recently read this fascinating article about the frugal fun that millionaires enjoy…#1 on the list…spending time with children and grandchildren…..and gardening was in the top categories also. Also, per this author’s research, only 27% of millionaires live in houses valued over $1 million. Hmmm….I know my couponing won’t make me a millionaire, plus that’s not our goal. But it can help with our family reaching other goals like being in a position to give more. Read here about this young family with some radical goals…like saving in one year enough cash to pay 100% for a home…talk about inspiration!
One final example of our recent coupon savings….last week, we stopped at a couple stores and spent $45 out of pocket with a savings of $83. So that’s a savings of 64%. I was very pleased! We came home with items like bread, yogurt, cereal, rice, diapers, paper towels, lunch meat, baby food, and of course some cookies (hey, sometimes it hard to pass up the cookies when they are FREE with the coupon).
Happy couponing!
~Ma
Taking Root 