Saving and Shopping

As you may know from a previous post, I’m a bit of a shopaholic, a bit of a bargain hunter, and a bit of a coupon fanatic.  Ok.  Not a bit. I should go to meetings for this addiction…but it’s a good one because I save my family a ton of money.

I used to go crazy buying sale stuff for me and my husband, but since the babies are on the scene, it’s all about them….most of the time.  Occasionally, I find a Hello Kitty something or other for myself (I have no daughters and she’s sooooo cute) or clothes for my husband so he will finally throw out those socks with the holes and his “painting” pants or one of his “vintage” shirts.  Did I mention he wore a red velvet shirt on one of our first dates?

Anyways, since I don’t work a lot, saving my family money has become like a job to me too.  I get so much satisfaction when I see how much I’ve saved at the bottom of my receipt.  I often make my husband guess how much money I’ve spent after I show him all my loot.

Last night, I went to our local grocery store and used double coupons, in addition to buying everything on sale.  While it was a pretty nice savings, today, I made the ultimate score at Target.

3 giant boxes of diapers, 3 boxes of dishwasher tablets, a super pack of energy granola bars, 2 sets of window insulation kits, 2 under the door insulators (winter is not going to be over for us for quite a while,) and a couple coloring books.  Everything was brand name, and I had coupons for the diapers and dishwasher tablets.  Without coupons or sales, my bill would have been just under $200.  I got everything for under $80!!!!!  Plus, it was all stuff we really needed….except the coloring books, but they were super cute and my 4-year-old will love them.

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How you ask?

Well, in addition to the coupons, everything I bought was on clearance.  I had been waiting and waiting for the diapers to get marked down from 15% to 30%, and today I found them marked down to 50% off.  Same with the dishwasher tablets, bars, and coloring books.  The insulating stuff was 70% off.

After making a little money working this past weekend, then saving all this money today, I feel pretty good about my contribution to my family.

I know this post is a little different from my usual ones, but I was so excited I had to share.  If you’d like even more tips and tricks, check out my “The Fun Stuff” tab at the top of the page.  Yes, I think saving money is fun.  Almost as fun as the actual shopping.  Almost.