Coupons: Are they worth your time? Absolutely!!!

Where do I begin?!  Ok, first the name change: Simply Saving for Six.  Yes, six,  My husband and I and our four children.  I normally get the question, "Are they all yours?" or "Wow, I bet you're busy!" when I go to the grocery store.  Yes, they are all mine and yes, I stay busy...BUT it also takes quite a bit of money to feed all of those mouths, so I recently decided that I would try couponing.

We had been spending at least $150 every week for groceries.  With only having one income, I hated seeing $600 being spent for food every month.  I had tried everything to save on the grocery bill.  I had shopped at Aldi.  I had decided to buy the store brand for everything.  (Which by the way, I really liked the Meijer brand!)  I tried eating very cheap and simple meals.  I even had our family eat cereal for a couple of weeks to see how much money we could save.  Seriously.  I was willing to try anything!!  Then I kept seeing my friends post on Facebook about saving a lot of money with coupons...

I had used coupons here and there, but I could never see how using coupons that would give me anywhere from 40 to 75 cents off an item would really make that big of a difference.  I decided to pick the brain of one of my couponing friends.  She answered some of my questions and gave me the confidence to get started.  Then I did what anyone who wants to know anything about anyone or anything does...I Googled it. :)  I found a lot of blogs that happened to have Facebook pages (duh, right?).  The ladies on those coupon blogs are AWESOME!  They answer any questions that I have about couponing and even better...they share their weekly purchases with a detailed description of how much they spent, how much they saved and what coupons they used.   At first I mostly bought the exact same deals that they shared on their FB page, but it's been a little over a month of couponing and now I'm finding deals that they don't even know about.  It's exciting!!

I'm no extreme couponer, but I do have a big coupon binder that goes everywhere with me!   Just today I saved almost $100 at the grocery store which means that I saved almost 50%!!  Who doesn't want that?! So, I have decided to share our frugal life with others who want the same for their family. 

Groceries for October 14:

Spent $97.05

Saved: $92.12

Received: $13 off my next purchase in catalina coupons

Within the next few days I will be post a "Getting Started" blog.  Right now I'm sick and can't think clearly...so until then...think happy thoughts about future savings. ;)