Coupon Save...Who Me?

Ok so I am usually a huge bargain shopper, I love to dig and dig through racks, just to come home and brag about my HUGE sale! Darrin used to say..."your sales are going to make us broke!" I mean finding a deal is nothing but pure excitement for me! Since Reagan however, I find myself buying whatever I want, no matter the price. I don't have the time, nor does she ever allow me to do the digging anymore, so I just get it and go!

I have never really found excitment in finding sales at the grocery store. Save 99 cents when you buy 2 of something is a terrible deal to me and honestly just not worth it. But I wanted to try to find a way to cut our grocrery bill down, we spend so much money weekly on groceries and I don't know where it all goes!! We always say..."well this will last us a while," and it never does. I am back next week buying the same things.

After talking to Tricia about it, I decided I would try to make a list of what we needed, which meant alot of PRE-planning.

A. I would have to decide what I was going to have for breakfast, lunches and dinner that week.
B. I would have to check out recipes and see what I had vs. what I needed to get at the store.
C. I would need to make a list of all things I needed to get to last us through the week.

So I did just that. I made my list and off to the store we (us 3) went. Darrin is the reason we spend so much money at the store, when I leave him at home and I go alone, the bill is always lower. He is the one who throws everything in the cart and I have to take them out. As we were going down the list I would tell Darrin things he needed to get and I would get other things. I would occasionally see him wondering off reading labels of other things, but eventally we got all that we went for (with the exception of a few things that weren't on the list....one being a knife sharpener, guess who threw that in the cart) Finally we get to the check out and....our bill was lower than ever!!! By like 50 bucks!! HOLY COW! We got everything that we needed and managed to get outta there spending less.

This is definetly the start to something good, we have needed a way to reduce our outrageous grocery bill. Could it be that my next step would be to actually cut coupons?? I don't know...maybe next time I head to the store I will have my coupon book!!!