Well, Target has had a coupon out for a bit now for $2 off any Archer farms deli purchase over $2. You know what that means right? Free deli stuff!!!

Well, the downside for me is, there are NO Super Targets in the Louisville area. The closest one is an hour and a half north of us by Indianapolis. Last weekend we had to take the kids to my parents house, and also paint the area for the wedding, so we decided to head up to Supertarget after that was done. We got LOTS of packages of deli meat (about 1/3 lb packages), and cheese, plus some salads and fruit packages. Total before coupons was well over $100, after coupons was less than $20 (including the rest of the painting supplies, etc.). We were planning on using all of this for our wedding food, then my mom told me she had found someone who will do 100 lbs. of BBQ pork for $80. And a friend of hers wants to cater the rest of the wedding for the cost of food only, as her gift to us. So we accepted that offer, adn will use the lunchmeat for school lunches, etc.

Gotta love those Target coupons!!!

Apparantly last week we had a big ole misunderstanding. Myself and the other parties involved have straightened it out amongst ourselves, and all is well. Soooo....

After SO much support, the tips will come back, I will be implementing some of the ideas I received, and also always willing to address any questions, etc.

I want to thank everyone so much for their support and everything. Helped my slightly bruised ego .

The first thing you need to do when learning to shop to save is learn your local grocery stores coupon policies.

1) If an item rings up incorrectly, what do they do? At one local store (Kroger), if something rings up wrong you get it FREE!! Doesn't matter if it's diapers or a gallon of milk, if it's priced wrong, it's free. Some places do nothing, and there are policies everywhere in the middle.

2) Do they double or triple coupons, and what are their limits? Meijer in my area doubles coupons up to a .99 face value every day, with a limit of 2 of the same coupons. Example: Act 2 popcorn was recently on sale for $1 a box. I had .50 coupons, which they doubled to $1, so after a few trips, I amassed about 15 boxes of popcorn for free!

3) What are their sale cycles? Some places run their ads Sunday to Saturday, some Wednesday to Tuesday. Plan your shopping accordingly.

Hope this helps you!!!

Motivated by Uncommon Cents' blog entry for today regarding the grocery game, I decided today's tip will be to list some of my favorite, and most useful coupon sites.

www.hotcouponworld.com

Lists are laid out by store, with any hot deals listed by a user who sees it. You can discuss deals, ask questions, etc. The forum is extremely helpful for anyone pro or newbie to find the deals and make the most out of their money in many arenas.

www.families.com

Same as above, layout is quite similar, forum based.

www.refundcents.com

Now, this IS a subscription access site, BUT it is not limited to coupon deals. Members discuss sweepstakes, online shopping deals, clearance found at various stores, super double coupons, etc. etc. The magazine that sisters the site is awesome, filled with readers stories, ads to get more coupons or forms from other traders, listings of rebate forms, etc. If anyone wants more information on this one before subscribing, please let me know!!! And if you decide to subscribe, let them know I sent you because I do earn referral credits.

So my tip is..spread your frugal wings! There are lots of great places out there to help you learn to coupon for FREE!!!!!

Well today I worked on updating my savings tracking spreadsheet I keep for our monthly grocery expenses, rebates, etc. I was proud to see that halfway through the month we have only spent $253 on groceries, have saved over $1K in coupons alone (not sale prices), and I still have a $10 rebate, and 8 movie tickets on the way. Not too shabby, and I'm hoping that the total will be below $300 for the entire month, and next month under $200.

Now, couponing in August is always fun (not that I don't enjoy it any other time lol), because of the back to school sales!

Target has coupons out now which have brought me free goldfish, oreos, string cheese and cereal. All things wonderful for lunches (cereal used more as a desert since it's lucky charms lol).

Kroger generally does triples around here every other month or so, and apparantly Meijer follows the same pattern, we're new to this area so I'm still learning.

Rite Aid has been having coupons in their flyer every week for one or two free school supply type items, which has netted me free envelopes, garage sale price stickers, art kits for my kids, and a few others. Last weekend they put out an entire coupon book with some high value coupons for things like coffee (I'm going to get as much of that as I can for my parents). I am lucky in the fact Meijer will take those coupons, which will net me free LARGE cans of coffee, free cookies (lunches again), and peanuts/cashews/etc.

It's a busy month, but a happy one, everything is just rattling along and I'm trying not to kill myself deal hunting!!!

Well, the last two weeks have had awesome sales + coupons around here. First Kroger triples, then Meijer triples (still going on), and Kroger is having some good sales too. let alone the awesome Rite Aid coupons I need to use at Meijer, the $130 ECB I have to spend at CVS, and the 2 foot stack of coupons I have sittin gon my coffee table needing clipped.

It's GREAT, as we're on a no=spending grocery spree until after the wedding (will explain in another post), so I can still shop but not pay anything lol.

The problem is..I am SO unmotivated. saving money is my JOB now that I'm a stay at home mom, so I feel very guilty letting any deals pass me by because I'm tired, etc. And I really really enjoy couopning, its not just my job, its my hobby and I love it. Plus the DBF started 2nd shift this week so we're adjusting to that schedule change as well.

I guess tomorrow is a new day and I just need to suck it up, it's weeks like this I wish for when the sales are dry. I need to enjoy it while it lasts!

Kroger near my parents has been having triple coupons this weekend. So our weekend of NOT going to see my parents quickly turned into going to see my parents so they could watch the kids so we could go to Krogers lol.

All told, we did great, had a few MAJOR issues at checkout, but all in all we did pretty good. Over $500 worth of groceries for just under $80. That still puts us under grocery budget for the week (I budget $100 for our family of 5 for everything...diapers, meat, cleaning, everything). I took the additional $20 and put it aside, just had a feeling.

Opened up the paper this morning, and..could it be..YES...MEIJER is having triple coupons ALL WEEK. I am going to be SO tired lol. Good news is DBF starts second shift this week so he'll be around to go and help me! I have TONS of coupons to clip, and more on the way, so I need to get my rear in gear but gosh Im tired today!

Shopping triples always takes alot out of me, takes 2-3 hours plus checkout and it's lots of mental exercise. very well worth it, but still tiring. After this week I won't want to see coupons for awhile!!!!!

Those are the stores we hit last night. Target still hasn't restocked any of the free goodies with their coupons, but I did get a bunch of trial sizes free after coupon. We're having our yard sale this weekend so that will be good to have!

Walgreens: Got 11 bottles of Palmolive dish detergent, a canister of Ajax, 3 12 packs of Mountain Dew for DBF, and 3 drinks for the kids (they'd been in the hot car for awhile and were thirsty as heck!)...all that for $16.09 and will get back a $10 gift card via rebate.

Kroger was a hit...20 boxes of pizza rolls (DBF takes those for lunch sometimes) for .20 each, 2 boxes of free mrs. Smith's pizza slices, 14 packages of hunts single serve pudding (4 in each package) for .65 each (another lunch thing), they had sirloin steak for 2.99 a lb so we got 6 steaks (thats a GREAT price around here), and I just realized we had a ham sliced and forgot to pick it up!!! CRAP!!! Well, I guess we didnt pay for it, so oh well, I just feel bad!

Also, on the way home saw a 12 pack of toilet paper laying in the middle of the road so stopped and picked that up. Someone dropped it I'm sure, but no one else was stopping. so that was free TP.

Save a lot has Cottonelle on sale this week for $1, and I have $1 coupons so that will be more free TP. Gotta love it!!

Rite aid has had this skin care rebate deal going on since last month. For each 2 of certain products you buy, you get a $5 rebate. Well, one thing I've stocked up on is Curel lotion. They have the 2.5 oz tubes for 2.59, I have a bunch of $2 coupons from their website. So $1.18 for 2, then a $5 rebate. Nice profit huh? Also, Softsoap body wash...$1.75 each after my coupons, $5 rebate for each 2. Again, decent profit. Right now I'm looking at $165 rebate check...can we say wedding cake??? lol I need to get a plan of attack ready for tomorrow. I need to buy printer ink, and groceries, although not much in that department. But tonight..I'm tired!!!

I spent the day working on getting all my coupons and rebates organized. Good news, I'm halfway done lol. Serious couponing is almost a fulltime job in and of itself, but its my favorite hobby, and saves us money instead of costing it. Over the years of doing this, I've basically adopted an attitude of "anything free is better than nothing free". This way I don't overstress myself if I have a rough day and don't make it out to get whatever is free or so cheap. Today is one of those days, my goal was to go to Target and Rite Aid to get free stuff. Never made it to Rite Aid, but when DBF got home from work he wanted to go to Target anyway so off we went. We got more cereal cups, 40 more sticks of string cheese (will last maybe a week in this house of cheeseheads lol), and more oreos. Total out of pocket, $1.74. Cost before coupons was $30.XX. Not bad! I am so thankful to have a fiancee who is so very supportive of this hobby, despite the mountains of coupons that randomly appear throughout the house. I also got my Refund Cents magazine today, which I love. It always inspires me to head on to the next deal. So tonight I'm cuddling up with my honey and working on coupons some more. Maybe tomorrow I'll hit Rite Aid!

I read through flash's whole blog over the last few days, she is always so inspiring to me in the savings realm, and otherwise. I've started contacting companies in regards to their products, etc. and I'll see what happens.

Yesterday I printed out a bunch of Target coupons from their website and went shopping. First, we had to get my fiancee's nitro prescription ($7.49), and I had a coupon for a $10 Gift Certificate with a new prescription, so total there was $3.51 "profit". Then I got 5 bags of snack size Quaker granola bars, free after their $1 coupons, 20 of the single serve bowls of General Mills cereals for .22 each after their .75 coupons (the bowls will be recycled next spring when we start seeds for the garden), 40 single string cheeses, free after their .50 coupons (2 free for each coupon). We also picked up a few school things they had very cheap..total out of pocket was $15.

Today we went to Meijer becaues we needed twine for our tomato stakes, so we got that 1.49, plus they had mountain dew on sale for DBF, so we got 4 cases of that and a free case of Diet Pepsi Jazz (who knows..dad will drink it lol), so that was $10, and picked up a few things I had free item coupons for.

Went to Rite Aid to get the free things they had advertised in their flyer today, but they were out, and substituting anything of the same value in the school supply aisles. So I ended up getting things I actually needed, envelopes and garage sale stickers, for nothing. Plus some of the lotion I ordered came in, so I paid $9 for that, and will get back $20 in rebates on it. All in all, a good money weekend!!!