Saving Money Rocks!

I am sure that most of us would agree with that statement, but often we get too caught up with day to day activities to spend the time it might take to find the best value. Or maybe it's impatience. For me it's a little of both. I am a DOer. Once I make my mind up that I want something I have a hard time waiting. However, Patience is a virtue and I am slowly but surely learning to be patient, scope out the deals, research the store circulars, look for coupons and coupon codes and save money doing it.

Since I starting couponing and looking for better deals I have not come upon even one area of my life that I cannot find a coupon or sale or some tip to save money. I have heard every excuse in the book for not couponing from people. The best are "Coupons usually only get you $0.25 off, you are just not saving that much money", and "You probably don't save as much money as your time is worth", and of course the best, "I just don't have time to coupon." This week I blog with the intention of busting all those myths in a 3 part series.

Part 1:

My Mom has always taught me the value of money and used the old adage "A penny saved is a penny earned." One penny saved here, a penny there, really can add up over time. The same principle applies to coupons. If you clip coupons and watch store circulars then you can save a quarter on 10 different items plus the savings from shopping sales and before you know it you have saved upwards of $5 on one trip to the grocery store. Over a month that adds up to more than $20 and over the course of a year that is over $240, and that is a conservative figure. I know that I save much more than that with one trip to the grocery store. When you add in all the other places I can save with couponing the savings really becomes tangible.

Here’s an example of some random things that I saved money on this month. This is not at all a complete list.

Season Passes to the Amusement Park: found an online coupon code that saved $15 per pass. That brought our family cost down from $400 to $325 for a total savings of $75

Reservations for a Hotel: shopped the discount sites for the best deal and found a 4 star hotel that normally cost about $150 a night and booked our room for $68 for the night. That’s more than 50% in savings.

Father’s Day Gifts: Took advantage of the great deals at Restaurant.com for gift certificates and gift cards. Used their online discount code as well and bought $55 worth of gift certificates for only $6.50 (savings of $48.50.)

Free Pizza: I entered a contest on the Coupondivas.com site and won coupons for 2 free Red Baron pizzas. That’s about $8 in savings.

Movies: chose the discount theatre on their special discount day. Their already discounted prices of $2 a person is $0.75 a person and then we took advantage of their Movie Meal pack and each kid had Popcorn and a drink for only $2.50 each. That totals $3.25 a person for the movie, popcorn and a drink as opposed to the standard movie ticket which is between $5 and $10 depending on theatre, time of day, age of movie goers and does not include refreshments. That’s a savings between $21.25-46.50 not including refreshments for my family of five.
Random coupons found this month in various places:

• Coupon for a prescription we use that saved us $20 on our regular co-pay of $30
• Coupon for a fast food place that gave us a price of $3.99 a combo up to 4 people no matter what combo they chose.
• Coupon for a local hair salon and got my son’s hair cut for $5.99 versus the regular price of $8.99


In total that is more than $250 in savings in June. That is the conservative figures for savings and that doesn’t even include my savings on groceries and or household supplies. It really does add up!