Beginning Coupon Success

O.K., so I didn't save piles of money! But I did have some beginning success with my couponing adventure. Since we haven't subscribed to the Sunday newspaper in some time, I didn't have access to many coupons I could have doubled up on for savings. Starting this weekend that will all change and I will start clipping coupons from the newspaper. Plus I have just started saving the grocery store ads and such for extra coupons.

So I had to use what manufacturer coupons I could find on the Internet and leaned heavily on advice found on http://www.frugalcouponmom.blogspot.com/ to plan my shopping list and organize coupons.

I did my grocery shopping at Publix which I haven't done much in the past because I generally spent more money. However, I called my local store and the manager told me that they will accept competitor coupons - even coupons for competitor brand products. For example, I was able to use a Food Lion general meat coupon for $1.00 savings off of a $5.00 meat purchase.

My money seemed to go further and I was able to purchase many products I wouldn't normally splurge on because of sales, such as New York strips, a deli rotisserie chicken, etc. Plus they had so many Buy 1 Get 1 Free deals, I was able to stock up on juice boxes, cereal and Trix yogurt -items which are staples in our household.

At the end I saved over $34.00 which I thought was pretty good considering the lack of coupons I had to begin with. Hopefully I'll do even better next week.

One thing I was very excited about was the Walgreens rebates combined with their in-store sales. Walgreens had Buy 1 Get 1 Free Revlon cream lip gloss for $9.99. And then they offered a $9.99 rebate for the product which you can submit online. So I was able to get $20.00 worth of lip gloss for free! They also had Colgate toothpaste on close-out for $1.79 and I found an on-line coupon for $1.50 off so I spent $.29 on a large tube of toothpaste.

Anyway, I'll keep you updated on any great deals I encounter. I'm having fun with this, although Michael isn't the most supportive. His response to my hourly planning and coupon hunting session was, "Is it really worth your time?"

I have saved a combined amount of at least $56 so far so it seems worth an hour's worth of investigative work to me!