Spring break

My daughter came home for a week for spring break. She goes to an out of state college and I miss her so much when she's gone. She caught her bus from Union Station this morning and is on her long ride to college. We did a little shopping at Walmart because she needs some camping stuff for next semester's class that includes a camping trip to Minnesota. She's so excited. I don't go to Walmart very much but they are supposed to be good for that sort of stuff so that's where we went. She also needed some clothing that wasn't cotton so she bought some wicking shirts and socks there.

I had my coupon book with me and let her get some toiletries. The deal there was a Schick hydro silk razor with free shaving gel for $5.97 that I had a $4.00 off coupon, bringing the price down to $1.97 for a 5-blade razor and goo. When we got home we got a nice surprise. Inside the package was another $4.00 off coupon for refills and one for $.55 for Skintimate shave gel. Not bad. We only bought one so go grab them while they're hot.

I went to Walgreens yesterday to pick up some things. Saturday is the last day of their sales cycle and I have found that my neighborhood store really sucks on Saturdays because the shelf tags are all screwed up. What is on sale is not marked and what is going on sale may just be marked. It was pretty confusing. Luckily I had paid a visit to couponmom.com before going so I had a notion as to what was a good deal. I knew there was a BOGO sale on Dial bar soap and Scotchbrite sponges I wanted to take advantage of and had coupons for. These are also the preferred brands in my house so when I can save 50% or more on the brands we like, I try to take advantage of the sale. I also saw I had a $3 off vitamin coupon that was expiring soon so I thought I'd pick up some for my daughter. That was something I could take or leave it. Even before I got into the coupon craze, I would never pay full price for vitamins because they are almost always on sale. Same with makeup. Buy one get one half off sales at least once a month.

While I was at Walgreens approaching the checkout, I saw that store brand batteries were marked BOGO so I picked up a couple of packs. I also saw a coupon in their March book so ripped it out. I was also Jonesing for some mint Milanos which were supposed to be on sale, but they were out of them. I did get a decent deal on hair color on sale for $4.99 and a $3 coupon and also saved a bit on Splenda, Progresso, Glad kitchen bags and No nonsense hose with their sales and/or in-ad coupons. For the Splenda, garbage bags and soup, I also had manufacturers coupons.

Checkout was a disaster. Three bottles of vitamins had to go back. For some reason the Nature made sale was only for certain ones and the shelf tags were off. The $5 centrum specialty vitamin coupon did not include the vision formula that I picked up because it was on closeout. The batteries were not on sale until the next day and the $3 coupon required a 24 pack for AA not an I pack like for the 9V. An easy misread. There was a list of batteries and I just skimmed the coupon and the last thing it said was 8 pack...but apparently that was only one kind of battery. I tell ya, they get you coming and going. I almost fainted when the amount was approaching $100, but then the coupons came and things started going back. I ended up spending a little under $40, which is what I expected.

I am sure the checker was annoyed that I was putting these items back, but he was pretty cool. I told him that if it doesn't work, I don't buy. The way I am working my program, is that the coupon has to work and the item needs to be on sale, and I don't mean a nickel off either. Now that my per trip savings are getting up to around 50% and up, I want it to stay that way, and the way to the bigger savings is to match the coupons with the sales and buy things before you need them. Why pay over $10 for detergent or garbage bags? Those are a couple of items that I won't buy from Aldi because their brand for those particular items is crap. Get quality items when they go on sale and add a coupon. Buy multiples if you have the money and space. (I sure wish I did.) Save the Aldi runs for canned goods, string cheese, snacks and bread. Knowing what to buy where is important. A penny saved is a penny earned, but a penny wasted is still a penny wasted.

I didn't go grocery shopping this weekend, just ran into Dominicks for bread, milk and Doritos to feed my Jones. Just that and I blew about $7 and saved 47%. Not too shabby. I would have paid roughly the same at Aldi and got lower quality. Real Doritos are my friend and I also love the $1.97 milk deal.

Coupon Queen

Oh yes! Now I am a coupon queen. Getting there anyway. I went shopping this weekend after working on my mini coupon binder for a couple of weeks and it made a difference. With all the BOGO sales I sure did buy a lot of stuff though....

After getting a load of coupons from friends and buying extra papers, I had a lot of work to do, clipping, sorting and filing. My son helped me sort them this time. I made a PowerPoint deck with the number and categories as the title and products as bullet points and printed them as two on a page handouts. I laid these 8 sheets of paper across the foot of the bed and laid the coupons on top of each category so I had a stack on each before I started stuffing them into the binder.

I have 15 categories in my book and because the sheet protectors are wider than the dividers, I put numbered post-it flags at the top of each divider and also printed out and taped an index to the inside of the front cover so I can always see it whenever the binder is open. That is tremendously helpful.

My binder pages are the homemade 3-pocket and also 2 and 4 pocket. Martha Stewart introduced a new Avery product line at Staples and they have 5 x 8 mini-binder sheet protectors divided into 4 pockets. Awesome timing and I got a 20% discount because they had a coupon on this new line (that I had to chase around Chicago to find BTW) These 4-pocket sheet protectors are the perfect size for most coupons. Business card pages also hold tiny ones 4 to a page. I'll admit, it probably did cost a little bit more to set up a small binder vs a big one, but it is so much easier to handle while shopping... and having it really makes the difference between pulling out $5 worth or coupons or pulling $50 worth of coupons. How cool is that!!!

OK, I bet you're wondering how much I saved. At Food4Less I'm not quite sure because the receipt doesn't tell you.

At Dominicks, the receipt calculated 43% ($129.30)but with the catalinas for $10 + $3 next shopping trip, $5 off next purchase of frozen food and free milk, in addition to other coupons, I'm sure it is closer to 50%. I'm not quite a super couponer like Jill Cataldo yet, but I'm getting there. I was stocking up on groceries, not stockpiling BOGO body wash, so I did quite well actually. When you are stocked up and just buy the sales, that is when you get to 70% savings by matching coupons with sales and buying things before you need them. I did buy 3 Secret deodorants at Food4Less though. They were on sale for $1.98 and I had three $1 off coupons making them $0.98 each. That's how you do it, baby.

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Here's a good article on savings by Mary Hunt that is very spot on. I am not quite to baby step 3 yet and have debt to pay off first, but I think that Dave's baby emergency fund should have at least 1 month's expenses rather than $1,000, at least in my case being a single mom. I'm living lean and trying to both save and pay down debt. As long as nothing stupid happens, I will be out of debt (except the house) within a year.