Have You Ever Spent Time Wondering...

about this couponing and saving mega-money stuff? Well honestly, I seem to go in "spurts" when it comes to doing this. I always slack off because it looks like I spend so much time and never get anywhere. Don't get me wrong I have done well on some trips and then totally bomb on others.

I am thinking that with our finances (which have drastically changed) and the amount of people I have to take care of, it is time I really invest in doing some extreme saving.

I am not talking about Extreme Couponing like you see on TLC. I saw some of those clips on YouTube and holy crap, some of them are looking borderline crazy to me. I don't want to stockpile to the next millenium, I would like to just be able to save money and not have my family "want" anyhting through the year.

So, I want to start small. Something I feel I can handle, that is what I think went wrong all the times before. I got in over my head before I realized what I was doing.  I have done a little bit the past two days and think I came out ahead, so that is what I want to continue.

For instance, (although I have no visuals to show) I was able to pick up some small water fountians at Walgreens last night. It was a cute little design of the old water wheels, which normally sold for the low price of $5.00. Yep, they were cheap to begin with. Well, I have some people in mind that I had to get gifts for (adults) Easter this year. I found these in the clearance section last night for 75% off, that made each of them $1.25, I took the last four they had. This will be a easy gift, paired with some cheap candy, for four people. And I hardly payed anything.

Today I took a bigger step and went grocery shopping. I decided on three stores. Target- because I had to return something anyway, Rainbow, and Cub.

There were a few good buys at Target, such as boxes of 12 (2-packs) for $4.48. I was able to pick up two of them and use $2.00 in coupons that I happen to have in my purse. This made it $3.48 a box, and my little "monkey" will go through it rather quickly. The other good buy was some toddler socks marked down to $.50 a pair. I only got two because they seemed to have an over abundance of girl socks marked down, not sure why boys stuff seems so hard to come by these days. I also picked up two containers of Similiac (1 qt) and spent a total of $3.00, this is after using a $5.00 and a $3.00 coupon.

I won't go into to much detail about the grocery stores themselves. I ended up saving a total of $39.26 out of pocket at Cub and saved $35.89. At Rainbow I spent out of pocket $127.20 and saved $128.12. I think that I did really well there for the amount of stuff I was able to get for the family. There were quite a few BOGO sales that I had coupons for and also this deal at Rainbow where the new cooking creme was 2/$4.00 and I had a bunch of $1.50 off coupons off one. I stocked up.

I have been looking at different websites and watching what I can find on youtube. I would love to hear any suggestions on making this work for my family. Great money saving ideas are appreciated.