Couponing is soooo in right now

My name is Stephanie and I am a coupon-a-holic. Hey, I could think of worse things to be. So about 6 weeks ago, I went to a doula network meeting, and found out one of my doula pals teaches a free class at her home about couponing. Couponing??!!  She told me that she spends $400 a month on groceries and birthday gifts for her family of 10! I was spending more then that on my family of five just on food. I went home and started doing my own reserach and found tons of blogs all about couponing and how to get stuff for free and cheap and just basically about being frugal. I have cut our spending by about 25% so far. I am hoping to get it down to $50-$75/week as I get better at it. I have decided not to make my blog about couponing bcause there are already a lot of great resources available. And here are my favorites:

www.thekrazycouponlady.com
click on her the tab "KCL 101" and then "10 days to become a KCL"

www.hip2save.com
she posts a lot about Walgreens and links to free stuff

In fact just today I got a sample of 3 free pampers that came with $12 in coupons that I signed up to receive a couple of weeks ago . . . for free. I don't have time to click on every single link that she posts but I do what I can.

Both of these sites will post when the new weekly ads come out for various stores (walgreens, safeway, albertsons, target, rite aid, fred meyer, etc) and will tell you what coupons match up with the sale items. Pretty sweet.

So basically how it works is, you wait for something to hit rock bottom price and you stock up. My husband and I put an extra set of shelves in our utility room for precisely this reason. And we already had a small chest freezer so that works out awesome. So about a month ago Albertsons had this insane Quaker sale where everything was $1. I also ordered 10 coupons on ebay for $3 off 5 Quaker products. I think the coupons costs me $4 for all 10. So I went to Albertsons and loaded my cart with 50 various Quaker items (life cereal, rolled oats, pancake mix, captain crunch, instant oatmeal, etc). So that's $50 - $30 in coupons = $20 or $0.40 an item. That's pretty Krazy considering you can usually only get 5 or 6 boxes of cereal for $20.

I must admit, my spending was getting a little out of control before this whole couponing thing. I just always thought we needed something for the house or the kids needed this or that. The amazing thing about becoming a krazy coupon lady is it has seeped over in other areas of our life. I am now very careful about what I am spending our money on. And we are hoping this will allow us to reach 2 goals: move to a bigger place in 3 years and be able to give more. Stacey told me that when he was staying in a hotel in DC a few weeks ago, he noticed a charge for $17 he was pretty sure he was not responsible for. He admits that a few months ago he wouldn't have bothered but he channeled my frugalness and disputed the charge. Sure enough, it was not his signature on the room service slip. $17 saved!!!

I have found some other interesting couponing topic as I've cruised the web but unfortunately I don't remember exactly where I found them. Such topics as "Why it does not pay to buy generic" and "Walmart is not the cheapest place to buy stuff" and whatnot. I liked the one about buying generic because when you first start couponing it can be very time consuming and it might also seem like it isn't worth it when you see the prices of generic products and think, "Why don't I just buy the off brand and save myself the hassle" Because, my friends, off brand diapers suck! and so do many other off brand products. So why settle for poor quality when you can get the good stuff for less without being unethical.

Other then this post, I plan on posting my super awesome coupon scores on Sundays but that's about it. Like I said, I think you will find a lot of great resources out there for couponing if you are interested in trying it yourself. I have also found a lot of links to blogs about organizing from the coupon sites and I think it's because to be frugal you have to be organized and you have to think ahead. Buy everything before you need it or you will be stuck paying full price. Noooooooooo!!! Not full price!!!!! In my family, we hardly ever need medicine like Tylenol and whatnot. We're tough like that. But on the rare occasion that we do, I end up running down to safeway and paying $7 or something. Well, I got some at Walgreens for like $1.50 (and you can usually get it even cheaper) and about 3 weeks later my family came down with the plague. Shannon got an ear infection and it was a whole scene. Luckily I had my super cheap Tylenol. I also currently have about 3 months of Huggies (that I purchased for between $2 - $5 per jumbo pack) and like 4 months worth of toilet paper (average .20/double roll). And don't get me started on my freezer full of chicken and my years supply of deoderant/body wash/razers.

Hmmmm, have I covered everything? I think so. If I have forgotten something, I'll just post an update. But I think you get the picture and you can learn all about the particulars at Krazy Coupon Lady. Like where to get coupons (I buy 5 Sunday papers every week. My friend with the 10 kids said one paper per family member is her rule of thumb).

Happy couponing!