Savings in even the most extreme situations...

Irene is on her way!  In less than 24 hours, she will be gracing us with her presence in our great state.  I have to say, originally I wasn't too worried at all.  We have milk.  We have bread.  We have eggs. (Why are those the three most important things, anyway...is everyone making French Toast??) We have plenty of liquids and non-perishables in the house.

But then as the hype increased, so did my sense of worry.  I do have 3 children to think about, so I thought maybe I should take some precautions.  So, out to the store I went.  But, here's the thing if you don't know me all that well.  I HATE paying full price for anything.  AND, we haven't bought a bottle of water in I can't tell you how long.  We just don't "do" bottled water...we do a Brita pitcher and aluminum reusable bottles instead.  So going to the store for "hurricane supplies" was annoying me because I knew I didn't have coupons that I needed.

But then I remembered!  The last time I was at our local supermarket, I received a coupon at check out for $4.50 off a case of water.  Even though we don't normally drink bottled water I figured I would keep it and if the water was on sale I would grab it...I could always donate it or use it for the kids' sporting events.

So off we went to the store.  Here is what we came out with:

The only thing you don't see is the loose roll and the doughnut the kids NEEDED to have because they were SO HUNGRY!!  I spent a little over $3.  Yup, you read that right.  Check out my % of savings!

It made me so happy to be able to grab the very few things we needed to have, and a few extras while we were there and not break the bank doing it.  I have learned a lot about couponing over the last five months that has taught me the skill of being able to go into the store and pick up things for our family and come out spending just a few dollars.


A few suggestions I can give you are these:

1. Pay attention to sales and special offers at your favorite stores.  I happened to buy a few boxes of brownies that we wanted when the coupon for the water printed out.  It was a special through Catalina Marketing that enabled that coupon to print.  I will explain more about them later.
2. Have a favorite brand of bread?  Yogurt?  Anything at all?  Email the companies.  You will be AMAZED at the amount of coupons you can and will receive if you just take a few minutes out of your day to tell them what you think of their products.
3. There are great online sites where you can test out samples of new products, and from time to time you will receive coupons for free items.  It was a coupon from Vocalpoint to try a new bag of Fresh Express salad coupled with a buy one, get one free sale that enabled me to get both bags of salad for free.

I love sharing what I've learned with others, and I hope this helps you out!