Well, that happened to me two night ago. And it's all my husband's fault. We were sitting in the family room, my hubby had control of the remote and I was working on my computer. When he suddenly switched the channel and lo and behold....it's TLC's Extreme Couponing.
Have you heard of this show? It's the craziest thing I've ever seen. These people are so coupon competent that they can ring up $2000 worth of groceries and ending up paying like $10. I'm not kidding. It blew my mind. Major Dad and I sat there with our jaws on the floor, blinking like owls and muttering incomplete sentences that sounded like "How....what....huh?"
Now I'm a coupon kind of girl. As I've said before, I don't believe in paying retail. I love bargains, I love saving money, but compared to these Mozarts of money saving my coupon skills are pretty much the equivalent of a monkey banging on a broken bucket. And my hubby knows it now...he looked at me after one episode and said, "we need to be doing that."
And so begins The Great Coupon Experiment. My goal is to get our weekly grocery spending down to less than $50 a week. Which I know is not even close to the pros on Extreme Couponing, but I don't have to be extreme. I'm shooting more for slightly radical. Right now I'd even take above average!
My first step...I now have a binder to organize all my coupons. No more little box with dividers on my kitchen counter. I'm joining the big leagues now. We even bought 9 pocket baseball card sleeves to slip the coupons in so I can see all of my little money savers. Last night I clipped, sorted and organized and I still feel completely inadequate. My little binder is so empty.
Next step, locating more coupons. That's what I'm working on now. Trying to find extra copies of coupons, printable coupons, digital coupons. Pretty much anything that starts with c and ends with on.
Of course I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm doing it with gusto! So any comments, suggestions or helpful resources that you have would be greatly appreciated!
Welcome Hoppers! I hope you'll come back again!
Not sure if you've already discovered this site, but it may help. On occasion I've heard of expired/outdated codes being posted, but I've heard more about how useful it is. Hope it helps. And congrats on the new challenge! Love you, Sis! ♥ www.retailmenot.com/grocery/
ReplyDeleteI coupon, too. I use the baseball sleeves. I am not extreme at all, but I do like to save money on things I buy. It helps me stretch my budget quite a bit. The part I hate is having to go thru the binder and remove the expired coupons. I like Money Saving Mom and Hip to Save. Have you tried them?
ReplyDeleteJoyfully,
Jackie who stays busy homeschooling a high-spirited 14 year old dyslexic sweetie.
My Attempt at Blogging
Hi! Just hopping over from "HHH." I have been affected from the show, as well. I was really proud the other day, in fact, to get 6 rolls of paper towels, 6 bottles of salad dressing and 2 boxes of tea bags for $7.30! :-) A great help for me is joining the "coupon" pages on FB. ("Addicted to Savings" and "Living Rich with Coupons") They list every week the sales in each of the major chains and what coupons you should use along with the sales. They also tell you to go to sites like couponmom.com where you can print a bunch of coupons, as well. I am still in the beginning stages myself, but I am trying! :-)
ReplyDeleteCome check out my blog, as well! (http://our4kiddos.blogspot.com)
Have a blessed day!
Lisa
I have not gotten into serious couponing -- yet. I don't even want to be one of those "serious" coupon gals but I could definitely stand to save some $$ on groceries!
ReplyDelete