Pinching Pennies

Although we are enjoying David's furlough days, it comes with a price. And to make things even worse, the state is raising our health insurance in January. So, we'll be out another $20 a paycheck. Paychecks keep getting smaller and smaller and everything else keeps going up, water, electricity, etc. We can't win.

Or can we?

In an effort to try to save some money, I decided I should start working the whole coupon thing. I'd seen the coupon mom on Oprah and was impressed at how much someone can save if they work the system. Basically, using coupons on top of sales on top of bonus bucks, etc. It's a tiring process, but fortunately there are lots of webpages out there to help make things easier.

One thing I learned was that I needed to know how much we are spending. I don't save every receipt, but we charge everything and pay it off in full every month. We also make about $300 a year on rebates by doing this. I used my credit card statements to add up all of my grocery, drugstore and warehouse store receipts for the past three months. Now, some of this stuff is random things like when David bought 3 pairs of work pants at Costco or I bought the kids socks and shoes at Walmart. But, it is what it is. It's all what we spend at stores. And I was shocked at how much we spend. I averaged 3 months and we spend $935 per month!

Now like I said, that can include anything from new plates to dog food to diapers to shampoo, but wow...it's still shocking. And I already only buy meat on sale and buy generic/store brands as much as possible.

I'm doing my best to cut corners everywhere I can this month to see if we can shave a few hundred dollars off of that $935 total. I'm totally into couponing and CVS rules as far as getting health and beauty aid stuff for super cheap. I'm also on a kick to clean out the freezer. You know how it goes...you're at Costco and they have a sample of talapia, so you buy the bag with 16 talapia in it. You eat it a few times and then it sits and sits and sits. We are eating talapia once a week until it's gone! And I'm not overstocking when something is on sale. Chicken will be on sale once a month. I don't need a three month supply of it.

I also joined swagbucks. It's an online search engine (like google) that gives you bucks for various things. I could easily earn enough points for a decent Amazon gift card by Christmas to buy Ben some superheros or Emily another doll that talks and wets itself. Isn't Noah good enough?

I'm learning a lot of little changes can add up to something big.
Here's hoping for something smaller than $935 for September.