I was excited last week to make a great discovery. Spices in the Winco, Bulk Foods area!! Now this may not sound like a super exciting find to everyone, however, I have said many times, saving little bits of money here and there is what really begins to make a difference on your bottom line. Spices have always annoyed me. You spend $5.00 and get 2 oz...that is $40 per lb. We would not pay that for anything!
When we moved to Washington, we were not allowed to bring any food with us, so I am starting with no spices once again. It can be a huge expense to restock your spice shelf. To my surprise, the spices in the Winco bulk section are very, very well priced and they have a whole shelf of various spices. The best part? The average cost for 2 oz was $0.25. Yes, you read that right, twenty-five cents for 2 oz! I bought garlic powder, rosemary, tumric, oregano, crushed red pepper, thyme and a few others and spent $1.18. CRAZY! That comes to only $2 per pound. That is a 95% savings!
The only downside is you have to put the spices in little baggies instead of those fancy jars. They do sell little spice jars for $0.99 each. I will probably start picking up one on each visit or, you can just refill the empty spice jars you have, as I did with my garlic powder. Go check it out today!
Good morning my friends! It is so lovely here in Phoenix today, rainy, breezy and cool...my absolute favorite kind of day. I know many of you are intrigued by couponing and with the popularity of it currently, many people wonder if it is something they could do. I came across this video made by the company I use to do my couponing and think it is a great example of the process I use. Why I love Coupon$ense is because it really makes using coupons less time consuming and less overwhelming.
You can try Coupon$ense the first month for $4, just follow these instructions!
Go to http://www.couponsense.com/
Click on Sign Up Now in the upper right hand corner
Scroll down to the heading Sign Up Today
Enter your zip code
Enter Promo Code: SURVIVE (use the caps)
Enter your email address Referred to Coupon Sense? Select Friend
In the drop down box enter my name Erin Rathier (unless someone else has referred you) Click Sign Up
On the billing page, fill in all the necessary information
Click Next
Check the box next to I understand the terms of my Coupon Sense subscription Click Finish
Your transaction will process; when it says print this page for your records click OK Now you are ready to save BIG at the store!
So, I promised I would share a few things that will help make your WinCo shopping experience a good one! This will short and sweet and to the point.
The store does not put out a weekly ad, they choose not to so they can pass on more savings to us. However, there are special prices every week. In the store, there are signs telling us the prices. Everyday prices are marked on yellow signs and special sales are marked on green signs to make them easy to spot.
When you first walk into the store, you will encounter the "Wall Of Savings" highlights Extra Savings and Price Shockers. These are also located on
pallet displays between produce and bulk foods, and the ends of our
grocery aisles. These areas are stocked with some of the best deals in
town!
WinCo does take manufacturer coupons at face value.
You will need to bag your own groceries, however, if you bring your own bags, you will received a $.06 credit for each bag!
You can even go here for a map of the store...it is big and busy, so being prepared will be helpful.
Let me know how your shopping trip goes! I would love to hear about all your deals and savings!
Yippie, yahoo, woo hoo!! Winco has come to Phoenix and so far it is off to a good start! Today I decided to take a short trip to Winco, had a few coupons in hand and was ready to see if I could save some money! If you watch Extreme Couponing on TLC, you know that a number of the people featured, shop at Winco and save a great deal of money, so I wanted to see if I could do it too! Well, the trip would have been a total success if I did not have four children with me and if the store was not jam packed...however, I guess I suspected both of those things would happen before I went. Despite it all, I was very pleased with the deals I found, check out the picture!
I bought 6 lbs of pork loin roast, 2 heads of lettuce, 2 heads of cauliflower, 10 cans of S&W Beans, 4 bags of chips, 2 loaves of bread, 3 big cups of noodles, 1 box of breakfast cookies, 1 Velveeta skillet dinner, 1 lb of herb and garlic deli turkey, 1 lb of sun dried tomato deli turkey, 6 large avacados, 2 tubes of Betty Crocker icing, 1 lb of smoked almonds, 2 lbs of strawberries, 6 lbs of grapes, 3 lbs of bananas, 4 lbs of tomatoes, 1 bunch of celery.
Grand total $41.58! Price before coupons $56.58!
Bottom line, with or without coupons, Winco has some great prices. I am guessing some of the pricing was extra special because the store just opened, but you can bet I will be back! A few things I wanted to point out for this week. Bananas were $.28 per lb, avacados were $.24 each, grapes were $.98 per lb, lettuce was $.48 per head, the turkey was $3.98 per lb (and I sampled it first). Tomatoes were $.38 per lb and the bread was $.98 per loaf. Tomorrow I will post a few things that will be helpful for your first shopping trip, but I couldn't wait to share this trip!
Well, well, well, I am ashamed to admit that for quite a few months I have been very lazy about my grocery shopping. I somehow convinced myself that easy and convenient was far more important than money as far as grocery shopping was concerned...well, my bank account is now reminding me of how silly that notion was. For the last few months, I would guess we have been spending around $800 each month on groceries (yikes) and eating out way too much because I do not always have enough food in the house to cook.
Fortunately, there was a marathon of Extreme Couponing on the television and I spent a few hours engrossed by the coupon success of my fellow couponers. I was inspired again to get busy!!! I keep a stockpile, nothing like the people on the show, but none the less, a small stockpile and this has proven to be a HUGE money saver. Well, the last two months, my stockpile has been pretty empty and I am feeling the cost of that in a big way.
So, last week, while watching the show, I organized all my coupons, purged expired inserts, labelled and filed current inserts and began making lists. (I still use Coupon$ense because it really does save me the most time and effort.) After a small amount of time getting reorganized, I had a list and coupons ready and made successful trips to Safeway and Frys, awakening in me a love for the process and profitability of coupon shopping. Here is what I brought home!
Fry's: Retail Value $55.95, I paid $9.50!
Safeway: Retail Value $62.38, I paid $16.29!
Beautiful, blond, couponer in training, not included.
All in all, my first day couponing again was a great success and my stock pile has increased a little. But most importantly, I have been reminded that a little time and effort is really not much to give up for such huge savings! If you would like to learn how I do this, you can check out all my Grocery Savings blog posts, click here is one specifically on how Coupon$ense helps me! As always, feel free to send me an email with any questions!
As you know, I am always looking for little ways to save money. I firmly believe that finding all the little ways we can save are what really make a difference. I have said it before, we know money leaks out of our budget on little things, so the concept must work in reverse. A foaming dish soap pump, will do just that...put a little bit of money back in your wallet.
I bought mine on a really great sale (with coupons of course) about two years ago. I bought the Dawn Direct Foam pump and I just keep refilling it. It does not matter which dish soap I use in it, I fill the bottle with 1/3 dish soap and the rest with warm water. I usually only need to refill it once every two weeks and the big bottle of dish soap under my sink lasts a few months. I find that it works great and I never feel like I need more soap. The only thing I use the regular bottle on is when I am filling up the sink to wash dishes by hand.
With the cost of dish soap at around $3 a bottle and average usage is one bottle per month, I figure I am saving $2 a month. Well, I usually get my dish soap for $1 for the big bottle or free per small bottle using coupons and watching sales. So that means I am only paying $.33 or $0 a month for dish soap...I love saving money on necessities! So, all in all, I could be saving $2-$3 per month on dish soap...that could be $36 per year! Not bad for something as small as dish soap!
Wowie, it has been a long time since I posted anything! What a terrible blogger I have been. A lot has gone on since the last time I posted and I will bring you up to speed this week, but today I want to put a great offer out there!
Many of you still have not started the coupon game, but would really like to. I have told you that I love the site called Coupon$ense. It saves me tons of money and time! Well, from now until September 15th, you can get your first month free! If you go to www.couponsense.com and click "Sign Up" and use the promo code SURVIVE, you will get your trial month free. You can cancel at any time with no hassle if you are not satisfied.
You can read my review of Coupon$ense and how it helps me save time and money here: Coupon Sense
Don't wait! Coupons save me thousands on toiletries and household products alone!
There is a great Breyer's Coupon on coupons.com. If you stack this with the frozen novelites coupon in the Safeway ad this week, for $2.49, you will get Breyer's Ice Cream for $1.49! That is a great deal. You can even take both coupons to Fry's and get the same deal, because they are still taking competitor coupons!
I have three kids birthdays coming up in the next three months, I think I will stock up for their parties!
Happy Sunday! I hope you are all doing well and saving money, I sure am! This week, I decided to add another piece to this marvelous game called Couponing. One of my Coupon Sense members recently posted on her Facebook page about a shopping trip to Target and all the savings she was getting there. I was quite envious. I had some time this week and got online to explore my coupon options at Target.
The wonderful thing about coupon shopping at Target is coupon stacking. What this means is, Target will take one of their own coupons (off their website or one of their mailers) and a manufacturer's coupon (out of the paper or coupon websites), off ONE item. Also, Target posts many coupons for non Grocery items and those are good on Clearance items. For example, my Coupon Sense member found a coupon on the Target website for $10 off bedding, she then found a sheet set on clearance for $13.48, therefore, got an entire sheet set for $348. Now I call that a good savings!
This week, I got on the website and printed any coupons I thought I might use. Now, I do not usually print many coupons because of the cost of ink, but this week that I wanted to see how this could work. So, I printed alot! I then sat with my awesome website, Coupon Sense and looked up each coupon to see if there was a manufacturer coupon to match it and found there were manufacturer coupons for over half of them. I also checked Coupon Sense for any sales that were advertised and I pulled all the coupons, matched them up and put them in various envelopes and headed for Target. I walked around the store and began putting items in my basket when I found a good deal. I was a little nervous about it because I forgot my notebook and was not keeping track of my spending...and that is not something I usually do on our budget.
I finally found all the deals I thought were good and here is the result:
1 KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce - Free
Nivea Body Lotion - $1.00
1 Colgate toothpaste and toothbrush - $.69
1 Tresseme Shampoo - $.59
2 small dog food - free
3 Benedryl Itch Stick - $.29 each
2 Nexcare Bandaids - $.37 each
1 lb Beef Stew Meat - $2.18
2 Quaker Chewey Granola Bars - $1.28 each
2 Kraft Deli Cheese - $1.74 each
2 Boxes of Lipton Iced Tea Family Bags - $1.23 each
3 Kraft Salad Dressing - $1.06 each
3 Oscar Mayer Deli Fresh Lunch Meat - $1.33 each
My total was $69.63 before all my coupons and was $16.35 after all coupons, that is a 77% savings. Not too bad for the first time. I will be honest, the whole endeavor took me a little bit too long for my taste, but now that I have printed the majority of the coupons, I will only have to print new ones each week and I will try matching them as I go. I am going to do this for a few weeks and see how it goes and I will post my lists each week before the sale ends so you can get in on the savings!
Time vs. money, that is the age old question when saving money. I sit here on Wednesday nights and watch Extreme Couponing and get the strong urge to have a shopping trip that totals over one thousand dollars and only costs me $0.35, however, when I sit down with my coupons, I realize that I have no desire to spend the amount of time it will take to do that. I have three kids at home, 9, 5 and 3 and babysit another 3 year old, so I am always looking to save money, while making the most of my time. There are, however, some things that take a small amount of time, but really save money!
One staple in my household is cheese, any kind of cheese, sandwich cheese, taco cheese, string cheese, you get the picture. However, cheese is pretty expensive, on a good deal we can get it for around $2 a pound, on a great deal, we can get it for $1.50 a pound, but not very often. When it comes to string cheese, something my kids love and I like them to snack on, the price is outrageous. Most of the time it is around $4 for a 12oz bag, not even a whole pound!!! Thankfully, I have found a solution that requires me to spend a small amount of time, but I can have string cheese for $1.50 per pound anytime I want.
I shop at Costco, but only for a very few things. This is because almost everything else I can get cheaper with coupons. One thing I have found is a 6 pound block of mozzarella. Sounds disgusting, I know. However, it is only $9, making it $1.50 per pound, and with all these kids and hubby who loves string cheese, I decided it would be worth a try to slice my own cheese sticks and shred some of the cheese to use for salads, pasta dishes, wraps and pizzas. Well, my first attempt was a little comical. A block of softer cheese that large is hard to cut up. I also did not know really what shape we would use it all before it got moldy.
So, for my cheese loving family of five (and 1 sweet one I babysit), this is what I do. I cut a third into one inch sticks (not exact but getting better), I slice a small amount for sandwiches and I grate the rest. Grated cheese does really well when you freeze it, so I put one bag in the fridge and 3 in the freezer. This time I am trying to freeze a small bag of the cheese sticks and will see how well they do once thawed. I know all of you may not have a big enough family to buy 6 lbs of cheese at one time, but can you split it with someone? Could you freeze more?
All the cutting takes me about 30 minutes and it saves me $6-$9 on average, that is $216 per year! I firmly believe that the key to surviving this economy is not about saving hundreds on one thing (some of us have cut all there is to cut), but finding all the little things...they add up fast. Just take a look at your checking account for the last month and add up all those coffees on the way to work!
Happy Tuesday!! I hope you had a wonderful weekend. Mine was on the not so wonderful side, a leak in the house requiring a great deal of deconstruction that is still not done, then two kids with stomach flu to top it off! There is nothing like a little coupon therapy to make things better! :)
Interest in couponing has really exploded because of the show Extreme Couponing, so I thought I would give a few thoughts on methods I have tried and why I do my couponing the way I do. Every Wednesday night I am motivated to have a huge coupon trip because of the show and I start to pull out all my coupons, open my laptop and start making lists. As you know I am a member of a website called Coupon Sense and have been for about three years. I have saved significant amounts of money using the site, however, I have never had a $700 grocery trip cost me $5.00. I have consistently saved over 70%, but seeing those numbers on the TV make me hungry for bigger savings.
Last week I decided to surf the net for other blogs that have coupon matchups for the stores I shop at and see if I could save more than ever. Well, I spent about two hours surfing sites, making lists and another hour pulling coupons (in random order) for this great trip. At first I thought I was going to really do well this way, but in the end, I saved 66%...what a disappointment.
What I did discover is that Coupon Sense is the best site for me. Yes, I pay for it, but the time I save is huge. I do not have 30 or 40 hours to spend on couponing like the people on the show and sitting for hours clipping coupons and organizing them in a binder, then surfing multiple sites is just not for me. Coupon Sense has me file whole packets of newspaper coupons by week with a unique numbering system, it has an incredibly user friendly database where I can search and sort by item, price, store or coupon, I can click on the items I want and print "my" list....no handwriting anything. I then print my list and at the end there is an incredible list of the coupons I need and they are listed in order! I can make a list and pull coupons in about 30 minutes and shop my favorite store in about 30 minutes! Half the time the other method took me. Will I have a huge trip that takes me 3 hours to check out? Maybe not, but I am not sure I care. I have had trips where I save 91% on about 15 items...I think maybe that is just good enough for me! Here is my latest trip to Fry's!
$43.17 spent and $83.52 saved for a percentage of 66% and time saved!
I do not have a magic formula for using coupons, I simply use the resources available to me and take a little time! I currently have more body wash than I need (will be donating this week), razors, 12 bottles of laundry detergent, shampoo, conditioner, cereal, pasta, pasta sauce all that I got for free...not two years worth, but heck, it only took me two months to get this...why do I need two years worth?
To learn more about Coupon Sense or sign up for a trial membership send me an email directly to erathier@yahoo.com (not through this blog I do not seem to get them) or check out my blog post http://survivingthisazeconomy.blogspot.com/2011/04/coupon-sense.html. The one tip I will give you is extreme couponing is much easier when you get multiple sets of coupons. I can help you get multiple Sunday papers delivered to your house, just send me an email to erathier@yahoo.com! Happy Couponing!!
One of the things I am learning through this crazy economy is that many tasks that used to be a regular part of family life are coming back. Without so much money to go, go, go, families are rethinking everything and making some old things new again. Many people are now fixing broken things instead of throwing them away and buying new things, carpooling, family game nights, hand me downs, etc. I was excited this weekend to try out a new bread recipe and start baking my own bread each week.
This month I am trying to get my grocery bill down to $200 and I am not doing too bad. Here it is halfway through the month and I have only spent $128. I have two weeks left, so that leaves me $35 each week. I think I just might do it. Bread, as you probably know, costs about $2.50 a loaf, but baking my own will only cost about $.37 a loaf, that is a pretty decent savings for the month. I, of course, needed a very easy bread recipe and assumed I would be using that dusty bread machine sitting in my laundry room. However, in my search for an easy recipe, I found this wonderful video:
I first loved this video because of her accent, that made making the bread seem all the more fun. I decided I could probably do this. I had to look up the conversion of grams of flour to cups and found that 600 grams of bread flour is about 4 1/3 cups. I also had to look up what an "airing cupboard" is and found out it is the closet where the furnace is located. So, I used my laundry room. There is no a/c vent in there and being in Phoenix, it is better than furnace for rising bread. So, Saturday morning my oldest daughter and I began our bread making process...I do not have a mixer like the video, so I had to do it all by hand, but I figured it was a small workout for my arms. Putting the dough together took about 10 minutes, we put it in the loaf pan, put a towel over it and put it in the laundry room. An hour later, this is what we found:
We put it in the oven for 30 minutes and WOW!
It was hot and sooo tasty. My brother happened to stop by and I gave him a piece with butter on it, his assessment? "That's better than anything I have bought from the store." Woo Hoo!!! It was so easy and delicious and it only cost about 20 minutes of my day and $.37. The best benefit, I know exactly what is in it...no chemicals or ingredients I cannot pronounce and it made me think of my Grandma Sally. She always had bread rising in the back room. This is definitely one of my favorite "old things made new". I plan to get whole wheat bread flour and try some other recipes with different flavors, honey, garlic, southwest seasoning...the possibilities are endless. Here's the recipe:
4 1/3 C Bread Flour
2 tsp Salt
1 tsp Soft Brown Sugar (helps the yeast)
1 packet of dry yeast (7 grams)
400 ml of warm water
3 tbsp of melted butter
Mix flour and half the water, add other ingredients, slowly add remaining water until all flour is off bowl and dough has a not too sticky texture, knead for five minutes, put in loaf pan. If in a warm climate or you can use your laundry room, allow it to rise for 1 hour, if a cold climate, 3 hours. Bake at 400 for 30 minutes. Mmm, mmm, good!!
Good morning, good morning!! If you read my post, http://survivingthisazeconomy.blogspot.com/2011/05/couponing-like-crazy.html, you know that I have challenged myself to do all the grocery and household shopping for my family of 5 for $200 this month. Well, I was excited for the weekly grocery ads to come out last Wednesday and was quickly disappointed because the deals were not fabulous and I was not going to have a great start to my challenge. I made a monthly menu and figured out how much of everything I would need for the month and hoped a good chunk of the items would be in the ads for the "best price ever". However, when I looked, there were not many.
I made a very detailed list for each store (at this time I am going to more than one). My list told how many of each item, coupons I was going to use and how much my total should be at each store. I figured at the end of my shopping, I would have spent $50. I made a few mistakes.
First, I did not check the coupon policies before I went shopping. While checking out at Albertson's, I was surprised when my coupons did not double and my order came to $8.00 more than I anticipated. That doesn't seem like much, but compared to $200 it is quite a bit. Then at Fry's, I added a few items that pushed my bill up to $14 more than I planned for. So now I am up $22 dollars for the week. I also decided to go to Walmart and pick up a few of the items I know are lowest priced there and found mac and cheese for $.38 a box. Instead of just buying enough for this month, I bought enough for two months and I am afraid that will sabotage my monthly plan as well. In a nutshell, with my purchases last weekend, my total for the month is now up to $111 and I still have three shopping weeks left...aaahhh. That leaves me $33 each week. I am hoping the lessons I learned this week will help.
So here is what I got for $103 this week:
3 lbs of shredded cheese, 3 lbs of strawberries, 2 bags of Tostios, 2 jars of salsa, 6 bottles of Pepsi, 2 bunches of radishes, 3 boxes of granola bars, 4 whole chickens, 4 tubs of sour cream, 1 bag of mini carrots, 1 doz eggs, 1 bag of 72 corn tortillas, 2 beef ravioli meals, 12 cans of enchilada sauce, 10 cans of soup, 1 bottle of ranch dressing, 3 Nivea body wash, 24 boxes of mac and cheese, 2 boxes of fruit snack, 2 boxes of Cookie Crisp cereal, 3 boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios, 2 bags of Lays chips, 2 bags of Boulder chips, 3 fresh garlic, 3 lbs of bananas, 2 gallons of milk, 2.25 lbs of broccoli, 6 packets of Lawry's seasoning, 2 Schick Quattro Razors and 2 seedless watermelons. I spent $103 and saved $189. Not too bad, but I have to do better!
Good Morning!! What a beautiful morning we have here in Phoenix today! I am so excited, because with the start of May, my personal, grocery shopping challenge began. I know, how dorky to make a personal, grocery shopping challenge, but as I have said before, this is the only part of our monthly budget that I have much control of right now. Regular bills are taking most of our money and with the price of gas ever rising, I look at the $500 I have budgeted for groceries as the only money I have to work with.
I have mentioned before, I can do most of our shopping for $300-$400 per month. Well, this month my goal is to get us at $200 or under (and still eat good). That is $50 per week for a family of five. Sounds crazy, because some of you spend $200 in one grocery shopping trip...I used to. However, I know there are families doing it and I am determined to see how close I can get without sacrificing quality. Besides, that will leave $300 extra each month for us...I can think of many things to do with that!
Now, in my grocery budget I include all household and toiletry items, my newspaper subscription and my subscription to CouponSense. However, I still think I can do it. A few of the things I am going to do are as follows:
I am working on a monthly grocery list so I can buy things when they are the absolute lowest price and I can buy enough for a month.
Coupon like never before. I will be on the site daily and heading out to get whatever I can for free. I already warned Mike he may find envelopes of coupons by his keys in the morning of things I need him to pick up on the way home. I did tell him that if I get to $200, he can have $100 of the savings to do what he wants.
I am going to bake my own bread. I have a bread maker and I am going to dust it off and get to baking. I know I can make bread for about $.08 a loaf so that will save at least $3.80 per week. I will post the recipe and pictures later this week.
I am going to buy dried beans and cook them myself. I believe I can do pinto beans for about $.48 a pound. We have lots of Mexican food nights in our house!
I am going to buy a basil plant for $3 and put it in the big, yellow, empty pot in front of my door and make my own pesto. This will save about $2 per dinner. We like this better than marinara and eat pasta at least once a week.
Now each of these things may not save me a fortune, but in this grocery game, every little bit counts. I went out this last weekend and shopped for free stuff and started my challenge out pretty well. Here is what I "bought":
I paid $4.46 for all these items and $2.89 tax for a total out of pocket (oop) of $7.35.
So you can see, saving just a couple of dollars, or a nickel on the strategies above will come in handy. Now, I was not going to put the condoms in the picture, but Mike thought someone else might need to see that even these can be gotten at a deal...I think he just wanted everyone to know that we need them. Regardless, a pretty good start to my $200 total, I have $192.65 left for the month. I am very excited for the grocery ads to come out tomorrow, I am almost done with my monthly grocery list and I will keep you updated on how it is going. To read about how I do this, look back to my post: http://survivingthisazeconomy.blogspot.com/2011/04/coupon-sense.html. If you have any ideas of more things I can make at home to save money or other grocery saving tips, please post them for all of us to read!
One thing I love about writing this blog is that almost everyday, people are sending me money saving tips to post on this blog. It makes me think of that High School Musical Song, "We're all in this together...". Today is a tip from Mike's cousin!
Have you ever tried to make your own laundry detergent? It is not hard, can save you lots of money and makes you feel super resourceful! Below is the recipe:
Ingredients:
Arm & Hammer - Super Washing Soda (1 Cup) $2.77
Borax - (1 Cup) $2.98esrss
Fels-Naptha heavy duty laundry bar soap - (2 Cups finely grated with a cheese grater, which is equal to 1 full bar) $.97
Mix all ingredients, and stir before each time you use it. Keep it in an airtight container. Use 2 Tablespoons per large load of laundry. This is a HUGE savings compared to buying name brand detergent.
*When I make it, I just go ahead and do a double batch, makes it easier. So every time I go to walmart I buy at least 6 bars of soap.
Keep in mind the boxes of washing soda and Borax will much more than one cup in them! Mike's cousins and Aunt all use this now and LOVE it! Let me know if you try it! Happy Washing!
As you all know, I love couponing!! It is almost like a game I am winning every time I go to the grocery store. The trick to couponing is the timing, using coupons when items are on sale maximize your savings. I subscribe to a website called Coupon Sense in order to save the way I do. Why would I pay a subscription to save money??? Because it works and saves me tons and tons of time and effort. The website does most of the leg work for me and I do not have to spend hours and hours figuring out how to put my coupons together with the sales.
You saw my pictures yesterday...my savings easily surpasses my subscription fee. The site is pretty specific to Arizona, but there are options for those not in Arizona. There are two ways for you to try Coupon Sense. You can attend one of my workshops (send me a message and I will give you the next date), or you can sign up online using these steps:
Go to http://www.couponsense.com/
Click on Sign Up Now in the upper right hand corner
Scroll down to the heading Sign Up Today
Enter your zip code
Enter your email address Referred to Coupon Sense? Select Friend
In the drop down box enter my name Erin Rathier (unless someone else has referred you) Click Sign Up
On the billing page, fill in all the necessary information
Click Next
Check the box next to I understand the terms of my Coupon Sense subscription Click Finish
Your transaction will process; when it says print this page for your records click OK Now you are ready to save BIG at the store!
The first month is $4 and each additional month is $15. There is an online workshop you can sign up for that will teach you how to use the site and various YouTube videos to help you get started. And of course, you have me to help you! You can cancel easily at any time. You can also earn your monthly subscription free with referrals or by hosting a workshop.
I do recommend that you subscribe to the Arizona Republic because that is where you will get the majority of your coupons. I am able to process your subscription and order you up to six Sunday papers at a discount. (You want multiple Sundays so when there is a free item or a great deal with a coupon, you can get more than one). I am not going to get rich teaching people to do this, but I just might by using my coupons and cutting my grocery bill. My hope is to teach my family and friends how to do the same!!
I know these posts on coupons are everyone's favorites, so I decided today was a good day for another one!! The new season of Extreme Couponing started last week and I know many people saw it and were intrigued. I also watched it and liked some things and disliked some things. Most of all, I was inspired to save even more than I already do. I will never keep that much food to myself, if I begin to accumulate a great deal of free things you can bet my local Women's Shelter will be blessed. There will be no purchases in our closets, bathrooms, under beds, garage, etc.
Anyway, Friday, I sat down to my website and made a shopping list, clipped my coupons, made a list of how much I would spend and strategized my trip. This took me all of one hour. I then went to the store to make my purchases. My Total? $8.31!
Now the crazy part is, I came home disappointed with this trip. Yes, disappointed. I spent $8.31 on $80 worth of groceries and I was disappointed. I asked Mike if I was sick...he said "Yes". I only saved 89.7% and I was working for over 95%! Somehow my calculations were off and I am working on that today! So, Sunday, my mother asked me to come over and help her get her coupons organized and get her started on the shopping. So we sat and put together a shopping trip and I was determined to get over 95%. Mom's Total?? $1.27 for the items, $1.72 for tax, $2.99 out of pocket!!
Yippie! Woo Hoo!! Totally crazy, but absolutely possible! We took home $46 worth of groceries for $2.99, I have spent that on the milk alone! My percentage saved? 97%!! I have a new goal each week!
Anyone can do this, it is not hard and worst case scenario, you will save only 50%. I would love to show you how, it is not as hard as the show makes it seem. Refer to my post: http://survivingthisazeconomy.blogspot.com/2011/04/coupon-sense.html for more information on how I do this. Or, send me an email or a message on Facebook and I will tell you what you need to get started!
