Living frugally, but stil enjoying life

While I'm still working hard at my paid jobs, I love writing here, so I thought I'd try to post once in a while. Just don't expect it often. Today I'm going to talk about frugal life, using coupons to keep enjoying life, as if you were not living frugally.

Coupons are a great thing. I'm sure you have all read about, or seen news clips about the coupon mavens that can buy $100+ worth of groceries for less than $5. It sounds amazing and a little far out there, but it is possible. I've started to buy groceries using some of their methods. Keep in mind, I've just started and have not harvested the supply of coupons that some of the experts have collected. I spent a couple hours collecting coupons from the internet, newspapers and magazines. I then went to the grocery store during a sale. Using the coupons I had, we purchased mostly things that were on sale, and we had a coupon for. We had over $110 worth of groceries and spend $60. On top of that we got $13 off of our next trip. Not bad, but I hope to do better next time.

A couple things I learned. If you don't have to bring a child with you, don't. One of the coupons I had was for some fish, which we wanted. It was also on sale for buy one get one. We got four, thinking that we could buy one, get one, twice. Well, Emma was distracting me, and I did not notice that we only got one free, total. I would have asked about this, had I noticed and if it was limited to the first two, I would have put the other two back. We would have saved more that way. Two bags of frozen fish was plenty, I just wanted to stock up.

Find an coupon organization technique that works for you. I kept sorting through the coupons to find the right one, read it and make sure that we were getting the best deal, sometimes the generic is still cheaper. It took a lot longer this way. I had them sorted by section, but it still took more time than we had expected. It was worth it though, for the savings. It was only an extra 30 minutes, for almost $60 in savings...

Sign up on mailing lists. I've signed up for all the mailing lists I could. Many manufacturers, as well as the food councils, have mailing lists. Sign up for them, and they will mail or email you coupons. File them away and use them to get even more savings.

Get rain checks. If the store is out of a sale item, even if you did not plan on getting it, or they are only out of one flavor, get a rain check. Later on when this item is full price, you might want it. You might also have a coupon for it later that you do not now. Then you get it at the sale price, that is no longer valid, and you have a coupon.

Just some ideas for saving with coupons. How do you save with coupons?