Welcome to Centsable Savings Stories and Struggles! This week I am rerunning the second Centsable Saving Story ever published: Andrea from the popular blog, Mommy Snacks. This story originally ran September 5, 2008.
If you’d like to share your story, I’d love to hear from you. Please email me at centsable.katherine[at]gmail.com. More details are at the end of this post.
I have been a stay at home mother for two years now. When I first began this new “position” I had countless ambitions of saving lots of money to make up for the loss of income. One of those ways was to coupon. I started, but my excitement fizzled. I found couponing was too time consuming (sound familiar?), and I didn’t truly see a return on my time investment. Well, when our third son was born, that piqued my interest in couponing again as we had some large medical bills for his surgery. I knew couponing could save us tons if I just put more effort into it. Fast forward to today and I’ve grown and learned a lot in this couponing/frugal journey! I now know my time invested in this is saving our family tons — $5,000 this year alone! Here are some areas that were important to me as I’ve learned and grown along the way:
Budget: I really do try to stay within our budget of $100 per week, but I also fail miserably, too. Looking back, I got so into getting every sale during my beginning couponing days that my weekly shopping trips were costing me more! I started with a budget of $150-$200 every week — CRAZY, I know. When BeCentsAble first started the grocery challenge, I felt challenged to reduce my budget to $75. I met that challenge for a few months but had to raise our budget back to $100. Our oldest son is packing his lunch at school, which includes foods that are not always on sale or have coupons. If he were to purchase his lunch everyday, that would cost an additional $50 a month. So, raising our budget by $25 is saving us $25. It’s worth it!
Stockpiling: When I began couponing, I felt like I needed to stockpile everything! I felt like the manufacturers had been hiding all these great deals from me for years (and, of course they were not)! Fast forward to today: I still scoop up lots of good deals, but now I know what we need the most of and what I’m willing to pay for it. I allow $10 of our budget each week to focus on stockpiling. Now while shopping, I don’t grab all the Chex Mix and run like I just got the world’s best deal. I know those sweet deals always come back around!
Time: I used to clip and file every single coupon using the binder organization method. That process alone took me about one or two hours a week. Add to that my shopping time of an hour or two and it was just overwhelming me. I realized I had to change something in order to make this work for me! So, out went the coupon binder and in came my new coupon organization method. Now I just clip my coupons at the time I’ll actually use them. Yes, I’m a file-by-insert gal. I always carry a few SMART coupons with me so in the event there is a great sale on an item we use a lot, I’ll be able to take advantage of that sale. Now, my clipping, list making, and shopping takes me two hours, and I generally visit four stores with my 16-month old. It has taken me time to find what works best for me!
Food Restrictions: Two of our children have food allergies that include nuts, eggs, shellfish and milk. If we could only have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in lunches everyday, that would help with our budget! Our youngest, who is now 16 months old, is allergic to milk and he is still on infant formula. These are two challenges I deal with in staying within our budget. There have been weeks that I would have met our budget, but I had to purchase formula and that took me over. This is life for us, and I make adjustments other places in the grocery budget when I can. I’m just thankful that our kids are healthy so going over in these areas don’t bother me one bit!
Ultimately, I try to do the best I can within our budget. I sometimes struggle with spending too much time researching and not enough time executing. There are so many great resources to look for information that it can get challenging at times. I’ve given up getting every deal out there. Sometimes I go over budget and other times I am able to purchase so much with half of it even when I’ve forgotten a coupon. That’s life and it happens–good or bad!
I try my best everyday to save our family the most so we can live our best on less–that’s the most important thing for us!
Each week I feature a different shopper’s story. Centsable Savings Stories are the stories of people just like you who are working toward reducing their budgets, bargain hunting, living a more frugal lifestyle and constantly learning along the way. If you are interested in sharing your family’s successes and struggles, please contact me at centsable.katherine[at]gmail [dot]com. Bloggers and non-bloggers are both welcome to participate. Click here to read the stories of shoppers featured in the past.
