Obsessed

Just a little PSA to start: I do realize some of these are not moods...just go with it... ;-)

Over the last few months I have become more and more obsessed with couponing. My friend Rachel at work helped me out a lot and learning how it works. I also went to a very helpful talk one night too about it. Believe me I am not an Extreme Couponer by any means but I can see how people get into it so much. It is an adrenaline rush of sorts-a natural high. My best outing was a few months ago when I spent $.77! It was awesome! Geoff thought I had spent $60-75 when he saw the size of the bag. I don't have that great of deals most of the time but I feel like if I am doing something it is better then nothing and it is just being smart about spending the money. It has also taught me to not be as brand loyal which is hard because we are pretty brand loyal people but I am willing to try and if I don't like it I will go back. For example we used to use Bounty paper towels. Good product. I have now tried Brawny, Viva and Tuf too. Tuf I think is Walgreens brand-I got it for $.59 a roll the other week on sale. We go through a lot of paper towels (which I need to figure out a way to lessen that) but I thought that if I could get them for $.59 a roll that would be huge! Those paper towels are terrible! Not very durable and I ended up using more just to clean up..so I won't be doing that again!

Now when I go to the grocery store I save on average $30-40 which I think is pretty good. The nice thing about our grocery store here is they double coupons up to $.99! They didn't do that in IL so that helps! I try not to buy anything now unless it is on sale and I have a coupon or at least it is on sale... Same with Walgreens. Though now that have accumulated a decent inventory in certain products I feel like I am starting to just buy stuff to buy stuff and this couponing might not be working out as well...I need to start watching myself better and asking myself if we really need said item at the time. I am looking for excuses to get out the house and couponing gives me that reason though I need to be more diligent about a budget.

The whole idea on couponing is items only go on sale in a 12 week period once so stock up when it goes on sale. This week I am going to go pretty minimal. I have enough Register Rewards from Walgreens that I should be able to go shopping for "free" and maybe still have some for next week.

As I get my good deals I will post them here to share!