Saving pennies...or subscription spending ??

I promised a while ago that I would do the great coupon experiment, using the Grocery Game, Couponmom and other forms of couponing and let you know how it went.

I first went with the Grocery Game's free 2 week free trial. After that the cost for a 1 store membership is $10 every 8 weeks. A 2 store membership is $15 every 8 weeks, a 3 store membership is $20 every 8 weeks and so on.

I tried out 2 grocery stores and 2 drugstores after my 2 week trial ended. This was a mistake... way too many options. Albertson's, Safeway, Rite Aid and Walgreen's. This was too expensive, and every time you add or remove a store, the membership automatically renews for another month, so by the time I had messed around a bit with switching stores, etc, I was prepaid for 6 months. Whoops. :-(

I also tried Couponmom.com. This site has free coupon shopping lists. They do have less stores listed, but hey, free is fabulous! Couponmom has lists for walmart, target, and the drugstores, and if you are in another state, check the grocery deals by state list.

You need to shop from mon-tues for the list prices of the grocery stores on the grocery game to be accurate. This was hard for me. I homeschool, so Mondays at home are vital to the rhythm of our week. I prefer shopping on Saturday for upcoming week, rather than going early in the week. Also, there are a lot of "Sunday only" deals on the lists that are actually Friday through Sunday deals, but since the lists aren't out until Sunday am, they say Sunday only. We don't shop on Sunday, so we miss all those deals.

The lists for the stores I did were accurate and good.... Did I need them? Well, they got my feet wet couponing, and I liked seeing at what percent off things were considered a good deal. After a month or two of list following though, I felt perfectly able to go it alone, because I had the basics down.

Basic 1. STOCKPILE! If you can get things at a great discount, use all the coupons that you have and buy enough for your family to last about 6 months, this is usually when the sales rotate around again. To do this you need room for things. It can really pay off though, if you get 10 boxes of cereal for free. :-D

Basic 2. GET LOTS OF COUPONS! duh.... Sounds silly, but to stockpile quickly and well, you will need LOTS of coupons. Ideally you want about 1 insert per family member with a spare or two. If you have neighbors, friends or relatives who get the paper, ask if they want the coupons. I have even heard of looking though the small paper recycling bins on trash day. (I would do this, but we have giant cans for recycling here, and I am not getting into them) You can also try asking the store for the inserts when the paper is being changed out. You can get by with just 1 insert, but it will take longer to built a good stockpile.

Basic 3. DOUBLE COUPONS. My local Safeway has ads in the front of the store, and they 99% of the time have a coupon that doubles 4 manufacturer's coupons up to $.50 off.... I use these every time I coupon for an extra $2 off. Albertson's has doublers too, but their ads with doublers aren't in the Sunday paper, and I always have trouble finding them.

Basic 4. BRING THE COUPONS Even while using the list, I occasionally forgot a key coupon, or just left them all at home, so I invested in a zipper binder with some pages to sort my coupons into. This is wonderful! I have them sorted by type of item, canned , baking, paper goods, tp, deodorant etc. Now I have a "No Coupon Left Behind" policy, and I can see at a glance if I have a coupon for a certain item, with or without the list!

Basic 5. SET A BUDGET and stick with it. If you aren't careful it is pretty easy to think "WOW! look at my deals!" and go crazy buying. This will get a stockpile built really quickly, but you will probably overspend for the month. It would be better to budget a certain amount just for stockpiling up deals each week, so you don't overdo it.

""All that work for a few pennies off???"" Well, if I can get 10 boxes of cereal for free, you can too. How did that happen? A sale, with coupons for all the boxes, a doubler or two and a mail in rebate. I had plenty of school supplies for our home school this year.... free or $0.10, kids shampoo under $1 per bottle, free toothpaste and way too much deodorant.


If you don't use packaged foods, and always buy store brand toiletries and cloth diaper, this may be too little savings for too much effort, but I found that the free items made it worth it for me. It also allowed us to buy more luxury items like snacks, paper plates, air fresheners, and ready made lunches that we ordinarily couldn't afford. I also found myself really enjoying the late night shopping trips alone. I was out of the house, and seeing how little I could pay, did indeed, feel like a game.

On a side note, I found that both types of coupon organizing (by insert date or each coupon in a binder by type) took about the same amount of time, and for me the binder allowed me to dash out in the evening without spending an hour choosing and cutting out coupons. If you use a binder you NEED a zipper closure, so any loose clippings won't fly all over the floor at the safeway. I'll do a post on the binder later....


Bottom Line: Definitely worth a try!

Baby babble fun...

Mark has been growing like a weed, and he is talking a lot now. But he has decided not to talk very often. He has a strange habit of using a word once, and then never again.

Has has said, only once, while patting to find out what the object is, milk, bottle, sister, yeah and DaDa. He has never said Mama, and does not seem to be interested in repeating the words he has. Also, his speech patterns seem to be focusing slowly, rather that learning single words, so instead of just being a random sounds, his babble is almost there words.

He is very excited by animals,and has said Kitty once while trying to grab Oreo. He startes to shake, and says "dis! dat!" when he sees dogs.

Anyway, very different from the other two, who learned a word, and said it a LOT! :-D

Envelope Madness

I am so excited about my latest completed project! I use a cash budgeting system, but I have too many categories for the old coupon folder that I had been using, and it was getting worn. I really wanted the Dave Ramsey envelopes, because they could go in my day planner, but I just couldn't swallow spending about the same on shipping as the product. This would make the envelopes about $1 each. I didn't want to use the flimsy white envelopes that I had lying around, so I just did nothing. Meanwhile, my old faithful was getting more and more worn, and I hated the sight of it.


Well, today I finally got around to trying to make cash envelopes myself. After a fair amount of tracing and folding, Voila!

PRETTY envelopes!

Since I was using what I had laying around, (leftover scrapbook paper) they were almost free.

I think Dave would be proud.... and I KNOW my envelopes are prettier than his!

Since someone asked, here is the template.

You will need to print it full size, or adjust to fill a 8.5x11 paper sheet.
It takes 1 piece of pretty paper and a dab of glue, or a bit of tape. I used double sided tape, but you could glue the flaps down, or use regular tape. I used this template about 4 times, and the lines may be a little bit off, so just adjust the folds if you feel like it. (I originally tried for a crescent flap lock , but that was a mistake... it works much better without, so just ignore the funny half circle on the flap.) If you like, you could add a ledger on the back, front, or inside the envelope flap. The finished size is about 6.5 by 3.75 inches.

Busy Busy Me

Well, it seems that the busy time of life is on me now. With a 3rd grader and a 1st grader, and a getter-into-all-things crawling around, I am just plain old busy. I am attempting to organize a bit better, up until now homeschooling has been a breeze, with only one that was really needing Mommy help. But now they both need help and a person who keeps them on track.

I need to get organized or I will drown in a sea of BUSY!!

So, I am attempting to streamline the whole homeschool process.

For us a major time eater was the I-can't-find-it syndrome. My children are HORRIBLE at looking. They are constantly losing their books/pencils/own head. Workboxing worked well for that, BUT it required me to prep it each night. This was too much to do in the evening. I have switched over to a notebook system. (not to be confused with notebooking) My kids each now have their own binder that has a awesome checklist (thank you Homeschool Tracker) for each days work in it, and the workpages/writing paper for the day right behind the checklist. MUCH BETTER!!!!! I am still keeping the workboxes, so we can use them occasionally. The kids LOVED finding a box with "play set with mommy" in in it.

I needed a place to see at a glance what we were doing each day. I already had a big binder (letter size and a 3" spine) but I never opened it. I couldn't even carry it in one hand while schlepping a baby about the house. I realized that I wanted a tiny binder with my info in it. Sooo.... I bought a cheapo Plan Ahead binder and figured out how to print out Tapestry of Grace and HStracker in teeny tiny pages.. :-D

Ta da! Binder goodness for me! If only it were prettier, maybe covered in Amy Butler fabric, and with a zipper around the whole thing it would be perfect. As it is, it keeps me on track.