It's Getting Easier

Yesterday, we went to Walgreens. This is the best trip we have had yet. Kaila and I got three boxes of cereal, two expensive chocolate bars and four boxes of personal hygiene products. It totaled over $27 for the order. We left the store paying just $3.88. We only paid 14% of what the items were worth. It was so invigorating!

At first, we were not doing well at all with the whole couponing idea. We would save $6 here or $8 there on our weekly grocery bill, but it was nothing to be too happy about. At times, it was a little discouraging. I wanted to save 90% on my grocery bill like all the people on the show do. However, it just took some patience.

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Ever since watching our first episode of Extreme Couponing, Kaila and I have been hooked on saving money. I remember when we both saw that first episode and we had this feeling of, "You know what? I think we can do this."

Couponing is probably not as easy as it looks. First of all, you have to like numbers. Kaila and I, thankfully, love working with numbers. We have to calcuate how many times we can use certain coupons, and the amount of savings we will get from a coupon. Also, we know what a good deal is on many household products. For instance, I know not to pay more than $.50 per double roll of toilet paper or more than $2 for any box of cereal.

We get a Sunday paper every week that is chock full of coupons and sales. We set aside about an hour or two every Sunday to look through the sales and mark down what is worth buying. We even have a coupon database in a spreadsheet that tells us how many copies of each coupon we have, where to use the coupon, and when. I subscribe to email alerts whenever Walmart, Hy-Vee, Walgreens and Target come out with new weekly deals, as well. I have an entire list on Twitter for all of the many coupon sites I follow. Kaila and I carry a coupon binder with all of the ads, along with the coupon policies of the stores and (of course) our hundreds of coupons.

We are starting to see the rewards that go along with couponing. On our most recent shopping trip, Kaila and I practically felt like we were stealing from the store. We went to Target on Friday and bought about $90 worth of groceries and household items. This freaked me out a little bit. Once the coupons went through, we only paid $46. That felt so good. All we had were pieces of paper that practically gave us a "get out of jail free" card. It was lovely. We saved something like 49%.

I think I am addicted to couponing. I have no reason to go back to paying retail for anything. If I can save money with hardly any effort, I will.