So, I haven't openly admitted here that I am frugal. Frugal to a fault. Cheap if you must. I almost NEVER buy something for full price. Whether it be food, toiletries, clothes, meals in restaurants. I'm one of those people. You know, the ones that have TONS of coupons at the store and hold up the line? That's me. Just smile and wave please.
People ask me all the time, "Is it worth it?", " Do you really save a lot?". My answers are YES and YES! Seriously, because I save so much I'm able to live the way I do. I'm able to go on annual vacations and live in our dream home and wear nice clothes. If I didn't save all this money I wouldn't be able to do those things. We wouldn't have the funds. So, yeah, it takes a bit of time. Especially to get a system down. But, once you get a system down, it doesn't take long weekly.
There are a few areas where I've honed my expertise. My cheapness. These areas are groceries, toiletries, travel and clothing. I'm pretty good at car buying too. So good that my husband doesn't even come with me. He shows up when it's time to sign the papers!
Couponing is the most obvious and major way I save. I'll share a few of my tips and then go into more detail in another post. I've got to start taking pictures of all of the stuff I come home with. Even my husband gets excited. And he even tells his friends. Which is HUGE! His buddy was here last weekend and he wanted me to give him tips, of course that was after he made fun of me!
Here are my tips:
--buy numerous Sunday papers. We have a family of 6 and I usually buy 4-6 papers. Having multiple coupons helps you stock up when sales are good.
--organize your coupons. Time consuming, yes. Pays off in the end, YES! I do mine in a lot of categories so things are easier to find. I have "tooth health", "hair products", "makeup", "dish soap/laundry det", "breakfast foods", "granola bars/fruit snacks", etc. I can't do larger categories bc I have to fish through everything to find the coupons I want.
--check out Hot Coupon World. I know it's overwhelming when you first visit. But, what I do, is bookmark the specific stores I visit. So, I bookmark CVS (my favorite store for deals), Walgreens (my second fave) and my local grocery stores. Occassionally I'll check the Target one, but usually they don't have much that I haven't found for myself. This place is GREAT though. You can search for coupons to see if there are any out there, they post weekly ad scans WEEKS in advance, they give you the scenarios matching the sales to coupons you should have. They are INVALUBLE to me. (This site is free and I tend to use it for CVS and Walgreens the most.)
--also check out The Grocery Game. This site does cost and I use it primarily for groceries. I have had friends try it and just not like it and I've had others that are crazy about it, like me! You can try it for four weeks (not a month) to see if you like it. They match the sales to coupons too. And they know about in store sales that aren't advertised. I really like it. It takes all the thinking out of it for me. Usually you can't get coupons for produce, meat and milk, but she does track the prices and tells you when it's best to buy certain things. So, chicken might be on sale this week and I'll buy a bunch. Next week it might be ground beef. I just stock up on whatever is on sale
--clear out space to stock up. I learned through the Grocery Game that a sales cycle is 12 weeks long. So, cereal may be super cheap this week and not again for 12 weeks. So, I stock up. Like 20 boxes stock up. I have a pantry and a deep freeze. I also cleared out room in my linen closets for all of the toiletries that I get for practically free.
--ONLY BUY WHAT YOU'LL USE!! Don't buy something just because it's on sale. To prevent myself from being tempted I only clip the coupons for things we use (or I send my unused coupons to friends). The only exception to this rule is items that I actually make money on, but I'll talk about that another time.
--use all kinds of coupons. Printables, the kind you peel off products (peelies), ones inside packages, REBATES, all of them.
--use a coupon clipping service. I get coupons from The Coupon Master. I do this when I want more coupons than I bought papers for. But, didn't want to buy more papers. If I want 10 coupons for granola bars, I'll go here to get them. I'll pay a tiny fee for them, but it's better than buying the whole paper AND since my store doubles coupons it's a very small percent that I'm paying. Plus, if I look ahead at the ad scans, sometimes I realize that I got rid of coupons or don't have enough so I order in anticipation of the sales!
Ok, that's enough overload for today, more later!
