Bursting at the Seams!!

I feel a little like the farmer's wife after the harvest is in and the food is stored away. I was at 4 different grocery stores today and I think it all went extremely well. I started at Walgreens--I am not counting that as a grocery store since I didn't buy any food(candy but no food!).

Then on to Schnuck's! I was working on my list last night & thanks to my good friend Lisa I found I had some clipped coupons & was able to get a few more printed--then this morning the coupons.com site reset & I printed again!



Yeah! All total I spent 21.25 for these items--not pictured 4 tortillas & all the vegies--whoops they were still in the cooler!





Best deals were the free Green Giant Vegies(4 boxes, 4 bags), & Chex mix(5). Then I got chocolate chips for .50 a bag(6) -- time to bake! I was really excited about their $1 sale--got wheat tortillas, bagged spinach, Dawn soap, & Puffs tissues. All things we will be needing!



After picking up my girls, we went to Kroger & there it got fun! After she totaled my order it was $65 then after the store & manufacture coupons the order was $30.01!!!




Best deals here were the Organic Annie's Mac & Cheese(2) for free & the eggs were B1G1. I had received some coupons from Kroger in the mail that were only good at their store so I used a couple of those but I also had received a "Spend $50 & get $10 off." I combined that with a $3 off frozen items and a free pizza coupon and it turned out to be less than half of the original price. YIPEE! The check out girl was asking me where did you get those coupons? I love it!

I like to really make sure I am not buying things just because I have the coupon. That to me is the system changing the way I buy groceries. I don't want that to happen. I want to buy what we need & use coupons to make it cost less. I think I can say everything I bought today was a "normal" item we would buy--I wasn't conned in to trying something for the coupon. :)

The last part of our day was spent at Aldi's. In my last post I was talking about how I used to do a big monthly purchase & not run to the store as much. I had gotten away from than and I can honestly say why now. There isn't much that I am not able to get with a coupon. So my purchasing at Aldi's has gone down. Now I did go & get some staples that we have been consistently out of and I feel really good about having those on hand now. Spent $80 there but now we have our oats, cheese, juice, applesauce, salsa, dry milk & sugars on hand. I also got quite a few regular priced produce items. Didn't get a picture because it was too much & I had lots of little hands helping put away--which was wonderful.

This girl was really confused about me taking pictures of the groceries. Forgive the funny picture--she was saying "What are you doing?" Tickled me so I snapped her picture.

So I am done shopping and stocking up . . . well until tomorrow when the ads come out.

What do we spend?

I have been doing coupons & rebates for about 11 months now. I laughed at my friends(shame faced honesty here) as they were doing coupons because I truly didn't think it made a difference($ saved/time invested). Well I am still seeing how it all comes together but I do know that we are able to purchase things for free & VERY discounted prices at times. I also have a much bigger stock pile of food & necessities now than I did a year ago. Also as for the time investment--I have recruited my daughters as my helpers and that has helped save me time in getting coupons clipped & such.

After reading multiple blogs about how much people were spending per week/month on groceries & household items, I began to get curious about how 2009 has gone for our family. I am a big believer that month to month things will fluctuate but over a longer period of time you can get a good picture of your average spending. I know that we have stayed for the most part under our budget each month on groceries & household. So here is how we've made out so far. Remember we have a family of 6 & 2 teens. :)

Grocery average is $557 our budget is $588
Household average is $362 our budget is $555(we save up for some bigger items this way)

At the beginning of the year my $ spent was MUCH higher than say last months spending--$50 more. So I think that using coupons & rebates are definitely paying off! AWESOME!

I want to start to shave those numbers even more--maybe just 10% to start. We will see how Nov & December affect things as we do more cooking & such during those months. However we will be able to use some of the stockpiled items and perhaps off set the additional purchases for the holidays!