Week 2, let's review!

Ok, so this weeks sale papers and coupons were not so hot. Probably due to Presidents day tomorrow. My savings were not quite as I had hoped but some weeks will be better than others, I still saved money and I still added quite a chunk to my stockpile.

What is stockpiling? Well I guess that we will go ahead and go over this subject as I will be referring to it quite frequently, especially over the next several weeks. There is a method to the extreme couponing madness and it involves stockpiling on groceries and things that we need on a day to day basis. Why do we need to stockpile to save money? It's very simple, if I have at least a years worth of food in my home at any given time, I do not need to spend several hundred dollars every week on the same things over and over again. I will only be purchasing things like milk, eggs, butter, etc. Think about it. If you only purchased milk and eggs on an average week, you would save so much time and money in the long run. Still not following? The point in to purchase a large quantity of one product because it's on sale AND you have some amazing coupons. Example: Publix had Bertolli pasta sauces on sale (buy 1 get 1 free) this week, they are regularly $2.57 a jar. I happened to have 2 coupons for $1.50 off 2 jars, so I picked up 4 jars. I would have originally only paid full price for 2 jars because they here b1g1 (buy 1 get 1 free). I would have paid $10.28 for 4 jars but because they were on sale I could have gotten them for $5.14. Remember my coupons? I used both coupons which gave me an additional $3.00 off so I ended up paying $2.14 for 4 jars of pasta sauce. Not only did I save $8.14, I also added to my stockpile and I will not need pasta sauce until it goes on sale again.

The point isn't to spend tons of money to stockpile groceries so that you don't have to buy food for awhile, the point is to buy a lot of something when you can get it for cheap or free and then you're set on that product for a long time and won't need it until it goes on sale again, thus saving you money every week by not having to buy it as often. Got it? Ok, so let's get back to this weeks savings.

Let's start with my Friday evening. My husband and I decided that we were going to go and try to buy some baby clothes (quite an expense when paying full price). We stopped into a new consignment shop up town just to see what they had. Lucky for us, they were running one heck of a sale and we managed to get out of there with 2 full bags of clothes for $21.00. Then we went over to Ross where we found some more great deals! We found a set of 5 Carters onesies and another outfit and got out of there for $18.00. If we had paid full retail price for these items at Ross, we would have spent $42.98, so we ended up saving $24.98 on 7 articles of clothing. I have no idea how much we ended up saving at the consignment shop since we do not know what the actual retail prices are on the items we purchased.



We got 37 articles of clothing (mostly name brands) for a grand total of $39. Our son will not need more clothes for quite awhile (especially since I have a baby shower coming up and who knows how much more I will get then!).

Saturday after work I stopped and picked up 2 Sunday papers, clipped as many coupons as I could and studied the weekly circulars. That's when I discovered that this would be a slow week for savings...



Let's review our loot:
10 boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes (Kroger 10 for $10)
10 bags of Rice Sides (Kroger 10 for $10)
4 packs of Carolina Pride sausage (Kroger B1G1)
10 cans assorted variety Chef Boyardee (Kroger 69 cents ea. when you purchase 10)
4 cans of assorted Bertolli pasta sauces (Publix B1G1 plus 2 $1.50 off 2 coupons)
16 cans assorted Progesso soups (Publix B1G1 plus 4 $1.00 off 4 coupons)
10 cans assorted Green Giant veggies (Publix B1G1)
20 assorted Yoplait yogurts (Publix 20 for $10 plus 2 40 cents of 4 coupons)
5 boxes assorted Publix pastas (they are always cheaper than other brands)
2 boxes Bic Soleil disposable razors (Publix B1G1)
1 100 oz. bottle of Purex laundry detergent (Publix on sale for $3.99 plus $1.00 off coupon)
2 dozen eggs (Ingles 2/$5)
2 25 lb. bags of Tidy Cat litter (Ingles 2/$7)
2 packs of Tyson chicken breasts (Ingles on sale for $1.98 per lb.)

Total retail value of everything- $187.92
What we actually spent- $108.16
Total savings- $78.26

Not amazing, but not terrible either. I did have to pay full price (or close to it) for a few items and I did not have coupons for many of the items that I purchased. I'm sure that a true "Coupon Queen" would laugh at me but I don't think that it's too bad for my second week. I'm learning and I also understand that in order to build my stockpile, I am going to have to invest some money in it at first. I was pleased that I actually saved over $1 more than I spent at Publix, that was pretty exciting. I sure hope that someone out there was able to save a few buck this week as well, feel free to share! Sometimes having a good support system is all you need to stay motivated to keep it up and not to quit! I hope that you all have a great week and happy saving!