Couponing???? New Hobbie???

I have been trying to save money on grocery bills for quite awhile. I have read several blogs where ladies were saving tons and tons of money by using coupons or rebates. I felt overwhelmed and didn't know where to start.

Over a year ago I did sign up on a website called The Grocery Game.com and it was very informative but I still found I was not saving the same amount of money that so many other ladies were. I felt frustrated and disappointed. I also felt very overwhelmed with the number of coupons that I had accumulated and didn't know the best way to store them. I would get frustrated when I went to look for a coupon and could not find it. I felt like I would spend hours trying to go through the list that the site generated and find my coupons and then to arrive at the store and prices were different or items were no longer on sale. I found out after I dropped out of the program that the list was generated on Sundays when the news paper comes out with the coupon circulars and the stores sales are from Wednesdays to Tuesdays. So this ment that I could only shop from Sunday through Tuesday (3 days) before the next weeks sales started. This didn't work well for me. So I ended up dropping out of the game.

Several months year I met my friend Jamie and she told me about a site she uses. It is called Pinching Your Pennies (www.pinchingyourpennies.com). I have to be honest, I was kind of skeptical about it and thought it would be the same as the other site. But there were a few things that I quickly realized where different. First off it was FREE! This was a huge thing. Also, even though I live in the state of Washington I was told by my friend to go to the forums that are in Utah. I thought this was strange but did as she suggested. And lastly, the list was generated on Tuesday the day before the sales started on Wednesday....so I would have the full 7 days to shop. I thought it was a nice enough site but didn't do to much with it. Last year, I was kind of busy being pregnant and didn't want to do to much in regards to food. The thought of it kind of made me sick. So I had not looked at the site again until last Thursday.

Jamie was leading a lesson on Couponing at the Enrichment Meeting that my church puts on for the woman in the church once a month. It was last Thursday and I decided to attend because Bryan was home for the evening and I could go. Jamie explained the site again and how she goes about saving tons of money each week on groceries for her family. I was excited to give this another try.

So I went on the site and looked at the list for Albertsons in Utah and created my shopping list and found all my coupons (all printed on line) and headed to the store prepared to see if I could make this work.

I am not going to go into great detail of the prices of each items or what I bought, because that would just be to much to type and you all to read. But I am going to share how much I saved!

Here it goes:
Shopping at Albertsons
I bought several of the following items
Cheerios snack mix
Cheerios cereal
Chex Mix cereal
Totino Pizza Rolls
Toaster Strudels
Fruit snacks
Curves Granola bars
Chex Mix bars
Cresent rolls
Hamburger helper
Progresso soup

My total before coupons/preferred card savings/and General Mills savings special:

$106.98

Savings were the following:
General Mills had a special for every $20 you spent on a group of products listed in the weekly ad that you would get $5.00 off instantly.
I got 3 General Mills Savings making this a savings of $15.00

I then had $15.75 in coupons for the products that I bought.

And finally I received a savings of $37.48 in Preferred card savings.

$15.00 + $15.75 + $37.48 = $68.23 SAVINGS!

So you take my total before all the savings and subtract the savings and you get (drum roll.....)

$106.98 - 68.23 = $38.75! (This is what I paid!)

That is a 64% Savings!!!!!!
Can you believe that! I can't! I am sure someone who has been couponing for a long time might not think this is great but I am new at this and happy with finally understanding how this system works.

I wish that I had taken a picture of all the items I bought...but I totally forgot. I am hoping to do this again and share pictures. I think I might be hooked....I think.