Saving Money is my New Years Resolution!

I’ve been hesitant to make a blog post about New Years Resolutions. They never stick so what’s the point? This year is oddly different. I do have a big one; to save money! In the past money has been a evil thing, when ever I have it I want to spend it. Shopping makes me feel better. While I can’t give up shopping, I can resolve to spend less and get more! It started a few months ago reading blogs about coupons and how to get things for free or next to nothing. I’ve tried coupons before but never seemed to save anything and the coupons where always for things I never buy.

Well all that has changed! I have a small index card holder and set up envelopes to hold the coupons. Right now I have them by category but I think I’m going to change that to alphabetical by brand name. I have been buying Sunday papers, printing coupons of the net, getting coupons by mail, I even have my kids grab all the coupons they find in the blinkie machines at the stores for me.

So yesterday I sat for most of the morning matching up coupons to my Albertson sales add. They had some awesome deals and I was lucky enough to have a coupon for almost every deal that I wanted to buy! I’m not going to go in to every deal but I’ll give you a few.

Buy 8 Rice-A-Roni for $10 and get $5 off any fresh Meat. I bought 9 boxes and used two coupons good for $1 off each, then got a big beef roast that was on sale and saved the $5, made the roast cost $1 and some change.

My DH likes to cook hamburger helpers on the nights that I’m in school, so I had a competitor’s coupon good for 10 helpers for $10. Plus I used 3 coupons good for .80 off of 3 so the total spent on each box was like $0.76

The helpers and Rice-a-Ronis where part of a deal where if you bought $30 worth of participating products you got coupons good for $15 off your next trip.

I got a ton of other deals including a free Reynolds Wrap and almost free toothpaste.

I ended up saving 18.17 from Bonus Buys, 71.89 from preferred savings (Albertsons card), 23.65 from manufactured coupons, 15.51 from store coupons and 6 from Albertsons matching coupons. For a grand total of $135.22 Saved! Plus I got back 3 Catalina’s good for $5 each and one good for $3 plus a new coupon good for $1 off pop tarts and one good for $1.5 of cereal. So really I saved more like $153.22. Out of Pocket (oop) I spent $99.64.