For the Love of Coupons!

So those of you that know me well, you know how I love getting a bargain.  Ever since we had Emily my goal is to save money where ever we can.  Along the way to save money, I have fallen in love with couponing.  It's so addicting and now my goal is to see how much money we can save each week.  I don't like paying full price for anything now.

So I thought I would share what I do to save. . .

1. We only pay for the Sunday newspaper.  It's so worth it.  We only pay about $10 a month and we easily make that back plus some, with all the coupons.  We also get a free Friday newspaper.  This paper has coupons in it too.  Not as many as the Sunday paper, but definitely worth clipping. 

2.  I print a TON of online coupons.  We do our grocery shopping at Target and Target.com has the best coupons and the best part is most are Target brand coupons.  The reason that's good is because you can stack a manufacturer coupon and store coupon for the same product.  That just means more savings! 

3.  I also follow coupon blogs.  My 3 favorite are on my favorites blog roll over to the right.  They make it easy to find deals and coupons.

4.  We're picky about brands to a certain extent, but on the majority of items we'll buy whatever we have a coupon for (i.e. colgate vs. crest).  We buy whichever we have coupons for and get the best deal on.

5.  We keep a coupon file and organize it by category (i.e. food items, personal care, etc).  This makes finding your coupons so much easier come grocery shopping day.

Overall, we save on average $15-$20 a week on groceries.  That comes out to $60-$80 a month.  And that's just the beginning.  Each month I get a bit more obsessed with finding good bargains.  :)  I'm sure I drive Shawn crazy.

Oh and for all you moms out there, I have to tell you how I save 50% on diapers and 30% off wipes.  Did you know that Amazon.com offers a subscribe and save option that gives you 15% off when you sign up (it's free and you can cancel at any time) and also an Amazon Mom membership that saves you an additional 15% off (this is free too).  So that's 30% off on all diapers and wipes!  Oh and they offer a Prime membership that you get for free as an Amazon mom that gets you FREE 2-day shipping.   So how do I get an additonal 20% off diapers?  Well, I subscribe to Parents magazine (which you can get for free - just check out some coupon blogs -they are always offering free subscriptions) and Parenting magazine.  Since I have started receiving them, they have had 20% off amazon.com diapers coupons in them.  So add that to the 30% off and you're now saving 50% off diapers!  I just ordered some diapers this week and the box of 140 diapers was originally $41.99.  I paid $18.99 (that's with an additional $2 off coupon Amazon was running).  That's only .13 a diaper! Can you tell I'm just a little excited about this??

For savings on clothing, I also am members of websites that offer really good deals for just a day or two.  I love Rue La La for me and Zulily for Emily.  And for deals on restaurants, spas, etc., Groupon and Living Social offer a different deal each day.