Couponing

Just a little disclaimer before I begin this post. I am by no means an expert on savings, I just enjoy saving some money through couponing. Since a few of you asked what I do I figured I'd do a post on the simple things I have done to save money. Hopefully it helps you. And if you have any more questions let me know and I'll try to answer them. 

When I first heard of people couponing I had two reactions... first, I thought it was a waste of time to sit around and cut out coupons for things I would never use and secondly, I didn't think the time it takes to organize and clip coupons would be worth it. I was wrong on both accounts. There really are coupons for things I use fairly often and the savings is total worth the time. The way I see it is if I save on average $40 a shopping trip for 2 hours of work that is like making $20  an hour. Not too bad at all.

Here are a few things I have found to be key to making your time with the effort. 

~1~ a coupon organizer. Here is what I use all these pages can be found here check out TheKrazyCouponLady for more tips too.

~2~ a newspaper. Seriously, the best coupons are found in there. We just get the Sunday paper so I can get the ads and W can get his news fix. It works perfect for us :) Here is a picture of all the coupons I've clipped and the ads I'm going through. That flowery pouch is where I put all the coupons I need for my shopping trip.

~3~ Online coupons. My favorite site to get the deals off of is moneysavingmom.com She organizing them by store and deals so it makes it super easy to plan your trip. I always go on there before heading to Target and check over the deals she has posted so I can get the best deal. or pick up any item  I may have missed while planning my trip. Often times target has store coupons for things so you can print the target coupon and pair it with a manufacturer one (that you clipped from sundays paper). This is the way you save the most money. The other day I got quite a few things for almost free by pairing up store plus manufacturer coupons. And a few of those things were Dove products. Just so you know it wasn't no-name brands or things you may not use.

~4~ Planning out your trip. I have tried to get better at this part. Basically I go through the ads for the week and see which things we need to get. Then I make a list by store. Pretty much I do all my shopping from either Target or Hy-Vee. I get their ads on Wednesday then pair the best deals with my list and head out. I  go to target about every week and then Hy-Vee every other week or so unless they have a great deal. 

I save on average between 20-50% a trip. I am not one of those people who stockpile, mainly because we do not have the room for it and I don't like driving all over town just to get one item for free. I have also found that almost everything goes back on sale at some store in a month or two and I can wait. We don't go through more than a stick of deodorant in a month so I don't find the need to have 10 laying around. I also buy lots of fresh fruits and vegetables so I don't save as much during my outings. But a 20% or 50% saving is still a huge deal to me and it has helped Wade and I save quite a bit each month. So my method of couponing may not be best for you if you want to get rid of your grocery bill. But for me staying under our $300 budget for the month is what I shoot for. Last month I was $80 under that. I find that pretty great. That's $80 we have in our savings account that we would have otherwise lost. Almost $1000 at the end of the year.  If you count all the money I saved a target last month on toiletries and other necessitates it is closer to $140 I save last month. Not too shabby. I am sure we all can think of things we can use that money for instead. Now that the summer month are approaching I will save much more than that because our garden will be in full swing and I won't have to buy very much produce. 

I hope this post helps. And please let me know if you have questions or I left something out you were wondering about.