Coupon Clippin' Craziness

So I've been a bit lax about posting.  I have entirely too many blogs in my Google Reader and I keep reading those instead of posting.  That and twitter and facebook and email and 4 month old...

One of the big things I've been working on is saving money (aren't we all?!?).  Being a SAHM is wonderful for most things, except our finances.  My poor hubby is working so much overtime but he swears he's happier working overtime and having me home with Squirmy.

We started printing coupons from smartsource.com, coupons.com, and redplum.com.  We were saving some decent money with that, but it seemed like we could do better.  One weekend we bought a Sunday paper from one of those boxes just to see what we might save.  That weekend alone we saved something like $75 between sales and coupons.  CRAZY!  We decided it was more than worth it to subscribe to Sundays only.  The full price of a yearly subscription for our Sunday paper is $65.  I thought it'd be worth it.  Even better since we found a coupon IN the paper for the subscription for $32!

So we've invested $32 to save money.  Might sound counter intuitive, but let me tell you...best $32 investment.  This week alone I saved $30 at Target and $20 at our local grocery store (Publix).  I paid $50 and $60 at each store respectively.

I've gotten a lot of "I don't have time for that" from people.  It seriously takes me about 10 minutes to go through the paper and cut out coupons and maybe another 10 to go through the online sites and print those off.  I just toss them into a coupon organizer (yeah, I'm hard core like that...I think it's the same kind my granny uses, fo realz).  I have the coupon organizer arranged by the aisles of the store.  I pull out coupons as I put the items in the cart and put them in the very front pocket.  At checkout they're all ready for me! :)

Some helpful hints I've picked up along the way:

• subscribe to coupon blogs...there are a lot of them, but they're worth your time to peruse
• stores will often honor manufacturers coupons AND store coupons for the same items (I had a BOGO coupon for cat treats and a store coupon for $1.50 off=2 packs of free cat treats)
• some stores (Publix and Petco) will honor competitors coupons
• our newspaper includes a ton of holiday papers for free with the Sunday only subscription (think black friday)
• learn your stores sales cycles...our store does different BOGO specials each week.  I stock up on stuff when it's BOGO
• if you have a store that does BOGO, they might accept 2 coupons for the 2 items you're purchasing (for example, if you have 2 coupons for spaghetti sauce and it's BOGO you're still technically buying 2 items and can use both coupons)
• sign up for clubs at any stores that offer them...you'll get coupons and freebies and special sale items

I promise this whole coupon thing is WAY easier to get into than it seems.  I was intimidated by it at first but it's not so bad.  Next goal...figure out the money making deals at Walgreens and CVS!