Savings: For the stay-at-home moms to the time challenged
A recent trip to Kroger, retailed for 46.00, I paid .83!
Rodrigo posted a status a couple of weeks ago that got quite a few responses. Since moving to Texas & having our beautiful baby girl, finances haven't always been on our side. We're in an awkward in-between stage of life right now. We're staying in an apartment right now because Rodrigo will be headed back to school for 2 years to get his masters, so we knew that buying a house would be pointless. So we're trying to buy diapers, formula, save up for school, throw money away into this apartment, and still have fun on the weekends :) A bunch of ladies in my ward coupon, & they taught me how to save in extreme ways! Now we can afford groceries and our dates :) I have not paid for toiletries since we moved here. This includes shampoo, body wash, toothpaste, soap, razors (the good kinds) etc. I have not spent more than 1.00 on detergent (TIDE!), makeup, tampons, cereal, & the list goes on. Here's the catch: I stay at home. I teach piano lessons, but that only takes 5-6 hours out of my week. Couponing this extreme is a full-time job. I spend at least 1 hour each day on it, & when their are big sales, I can easily spend 3-4 hours getting ready for it.
First, for those who are time challenge: Y'all have a job, school, for whatever reason, you just can't spend that kind of time on saving money. I can share with you a few tips that will help you lower your budget quite a bit!
1. Always look at your stores weekly ads! Each week every store comes out with a weekly ad that has the sales going on. For grocery stores, in almost all of their ads the front page is full of their money losers. It's the food that they need to get rid of & are losing money on the price is so low! If you can make a dinner around those items, DO IT!
2. The best place to get your toiletries is.....PHARMACIES! Shocking, i know. CVS & Walgreens have these items priced ridiculously high. The difference in pricing between there and walmart is usually 2-3 dollars. However, there is a secret. Now, I cannot tell you Walgreen's secret, they change their policy so often it's ridiculous & I will just never understand that store. However, CVS is a gold mine. First of all there's a coupon machine in the front of the store, using your CVS card, you scan it & CVS coupons will print. The best part: You can stack you CVS coupons with manufacture coupons. For example, say Loreal shampoo is on sale for 5.00, you have a 2.00 coupon from the internet, and when you scanned your card it gave you a 2.00 coupon off of 5.00 worth of shampoo. You can use BOTH of those coupons, making the shampoo only 1.00! Oh wait, there's more. That shampoo could be on promotion that week, when you buy 4, you get 5 Extrabucks! So when you pay for your shampoo, 5.00 will print at the cashier, & next time you can use those 5.00 towards anything, you can stack that 5.00, with a CVS coupon, WITH a manufacture coupon! (Have I lost you yet?) If so, don't worry, it's really confusing at first, but ask questions & you'll pick it up in no time.
3. Sign up for bing.com. Everytime you search on bing.com, you get points. You can get up to 30 points a day, & the rewards are pretty sweet. For example, 400 points gets you a 5.00 starbucks giftcard. There's giftcards for Amazon, itunes, hulu, etc. It'll take you a month to get there, but why not get rewarded for doing stuff you already do like searching the internet.
4. Lastly, using coupons just to use coupons is a waste. Match your coupons with sales that'll give you the best out of pocket total. Unless you absolutely need toothpaste that minute & you have a coupon for it, wait until there's a good sale, then stock up!!
For those of you who have the time: I would love to help you make a huge difference in your life savings like I did. It's a huge blessing, and is so rewarding. Their is far too much to say in this little post on how you can do that, so my best advice would be to go to http://thekrazycouponlady.com/beginners/#day1 . If you really want to start going, the next step would be to order the Sunday paper, or find someone in your area who is selling it. You can look that up online, I get 5 Sunday papers for 1.00 each, this was through a promotion in my area. If you don't want to do that, you can always find coupons online, not all of the ones you'll want/need, but there's plenty of them there. After that, here are the sites that I usually follow to get the best deals:
www.krogerkrazy.com (For those that have a Kroger in their area)
www.addictedtosaving.com
www.krazycouponlady.com
www.mylitter.com
It sounds really geeky, but it's such a nerve wracking/good feeling when you go to the check out, the cashier hits total, it's over 100.00 & then you get the total down to 20.00!
If you ever need help, have questions, just ask! Facebook, or e-mail me, & I will do the best I can :) I know all the policies, and the ins & outs about the terminology, just holla :) (does anyone use that phrase anymore?)
One last quick thing. For any of you that have seen the show extreme couponing, you can't be that extreme anymore. After the show aired lots of people tried to start & the stores ended up with a lot of rude customers, doing it wrong, & huge problems. Therefore a lot of stores have stopped allowing doubling coupons, extreme sales, and allowing the gain of money. Walmart is one of the only stores that will pay you if your total is positive at the end. If this happens at any other store, you will have to add more stuff to get your total to 0. This is how I normally pay for my cheese, & milk (things that their usually aren't coupons for.)
Okay, I think that was too long a post, there's a lot more that I'm forgetting, but if anyone is really interested in pursuing saving their money, I will always be willing to help! Have I said that enough? Okay. You get it. Bye.
