Our Shopping Trip

Guess what my fiancé and I did tonight? We went shopping!!! As I was looking through the ads on Sunday I wasn’t really finding that many good sales that matched up with coupons I had. Plus, we had just gone shopping on Friday so we didn’t really need that much this week. But, I found some things on sale that we could use for the beach so we made a small trip.

First up was Five Below. They have these cute totes for the beach for $5!! While we were there, we noticed these small coolers right beside the totes so we decided to get one of those. We have a bigger cooler that we are going to take some lunchmeat and cheese in but my fiancé thought we needed a smaller cooler to take with us when we go from the hotel to the beach. I also needed more baseball card holders for my coupon binder so I got another pack of 30. Oh, and my fiancé got his first drink of the night, a 7-up.

Our total ended up being $17.16.
We spent about $7 more than I thought we would because I was only planning on getting the tote and baseball card holders.

Next stop…CVS. I was only getting 2 things here: 4 boxes of Nabisco crackers or cookies and a 6 pack of Bounty paper towels. The first thing I did after getting inside was scan my card at the coupon kiosk. I got 3 coupons: 50 cents off 2 dove large bars, $1.00 off Twizzlers, and $1.00 Pringles to go. I had read about the Pringles one online and knew that you could get the Pringles for free since they cost $1.00. So I definitely knew I was getting that. That was the only extra thing I got at CVS, which really didn’t make a difference since it was free.

So the total came out to be $6.22 with a total savings of $12.40!!!

I didn’t realize how small the boxes of Nabisco crackers and cookies were but they are going to be perfect for the beach.

Next up we went to Acmoore. Remember that lamp I was talking about in this post that I found at Goodwill that I want to paint? Well, I needed to get some fabric paint so I can do that. So I got that and some fabric paint brushes. And my fiancé needed a red bandana for airsoft so he got a red one and black one because they were on sale.  I had a coupon for 55% off one item and the total was $10.81.

 

Our last stop of the night was Giant. After getting our rewards card we proceeded to go up and down every aisle looking for what was on the list. Here is what we got: 10 yogurts, 9 cans of vegetables, 2 loafs of bread, 3 bags of baby carrots, 1 can of shaving cream, 1 bottle of mouthwash, 3 cans of Pringles, 3 tubs of dip, 5 bottles of flavored sparkling water, a 20 oz. soda (I forget what kind), and the newest Rachael Ray magazine. I was only expecting the total of this trip to be around $30 but we got a little more than what was on the list. I had to get mouthwash because when I went to the dentist yesterday he told me I had to start using mouthwash. He told me that the last time I was there and I did use it…but only for a few months. My fiancé found the sparkling water and wanted to get that so we did. And we thought the bread was $1 each but the white bread wasn’t on sale, so it was $1.19, but that’s not that bad.

Our total before savings was $60.31
Our savings was $12.81
And our total after savings was $48.48

I don’t think that’s too bad considering it was only about $18 more than I thought it would have been.

So overall we spent $82.67. We’ll probably skip the store next week unless I find some really good deals because we have a lot of food now. Our pantry is almost overflowing!!! So how do you think I did? Did I get some good deals or what? Leave me comments!!!

My new coupon binder!

I am on my way to becoming an extreme couponer!!! Okay, so I probably won’t be appearing on the show anytime soon because there is no way I’m going to be able to come close to saving as much as they do. But I’m still going to attempt to save as much money as I can.

So now I want to share how my couponing has evolved within the past week.

First I just had my coupons in this file folder I got at the Dollar Tree. They weren’t organized or anything so I knew I had to do something about that.

That is when I decided to categorize my coupons. One of my fiancé's co-workers told him about the site The Krazy Coupon Lady so I’ve been using that site to get some tips. She has a PDF file for a coupon binder that has listed all the sections you will need to make your own coupon binder. So I organized my coupons into a bunch of categories and paper clipped them together. I thought that this would work, but then decided that I need an actual binder to put my coupons in.

So, here is what I came up with:

 

I got a binder from Walmart and some baseball card holders from Five Below. Then I typed up my own section dividers, because it used up less ink that way.

 

I am all set for my first shopping trip as an extreme couponer!!!  I just have to wait for my fiancé to get home from work and then we are off to CVS, Giant, and Weis!!! Usually when we go to the grocery store we end up spending over $100 every 2 weeks. It has been a little more than 2 weeks since our last trip though. But we don’t need too much because we have the basics (milk, eggs, bread, meat). I went through the ads last Sunday and wrote down what I’m getting along with what coupons I have for each item and how much it’s going to be. I totaled up what I think we’re going to spend at each store. The estimated cost that I think it’s going to be for all 3 stores is $70. I will let you all know what the actual total is sometime later this weekend!! In the meantime, go check out my current giveaways. Have a great Friday night everyone!!!