Random Thoughts:My "Aha!" moment

I started couponing more than 2 years ago, and really began to understand what it meant to coupon after about a year. I guess I'm a slow learner. A typical shopping trip for me prior to understanding coupons would be walking into a store with about three coupons, and if I was lucky I would have four or five coupons. I would pay the $2.99 for the toothpaste and hand over my $.50 coupon. Now I wouldn't even dream of paying that much for toothpaste, deodorant, or shampoo. What I couldn't figure out is why I wasn't saving all the money that all the other couponers were.

My coupons came from the Sunday inserts and I always only had one of the coupons so I couldn't capitalize on a sale if something I needed was at a good price. My ahha moment came when my mom started giving me her coupons and then I had two of each coupon, and then I figured out if I bought the item while it was on sale and used a coupon it would make it an even better deal. I then started asking my family for their Sunday inserts if they weren't using them to get even more savings.

While I don't save the hundreds of dollars that we've all read about, we have started saving 10-25% off of our grocery bill by using coupons, watching sale prices, and shopping at other stores. Another goldmine for us that's worth mentioning that has helped reduce our grocery budget is by shopping at our local Aldi grocery store. Aldi provides a low price on staples that we use everyday and the majority of what we've purchased is the same or better quality than the name brand item that we would purchase at our local grocery store.