Coupon

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Everytime I say that word, I think of the Ron White skit where he talks about having to buy coupons and then use the coupons to buy beer... I'm sure Ahow knows what I'm talking about.

Anyway, I alway thought that coupons were a waste of time. Granted, this was back when I was making good money and my company billed my time for a few hundred bucks an hour... I had an altered sense of how valuable my time was.

Now, being poor and looking at the fact that my new career will be paying me roughly $25 an hour, suddenly coupons are looking a little more fruitful.

A couple months ago I ended up behind some people at the grocery store. It appeared that they were almost done being checked out, but then they pulled out a STACK of coupons. I started counting how many coupons it was about halfway through and I got up to 30, so I am guessing they had a good 60 coupons. Some got doubled and tripled. It was madness. While I wanted to tear my hair out waiting in line behind them with my two items, I must confess I was impressed and envious when their bill was $80 and their savings on the bill was over $80.

Recently I started at least saving coupons. That was step 1. Unfortunately, I saved them until they expired. DOH. Finally, yesterday, I got them organized and took a big stack of them out to Meijer. I also bought every Meijer brand item I could. When I went through the checkout, it was quite rewarding to see my savings were $40 and some odd change.

I am hoping that this little trend of mine hangs on and turns into a habit. While coupon cutting is tedious, when you don't do it, it's basically chucking some free money out with the trash!

P.S. We just got an ALDI in West Lafayette and I keep meaning to stop there and shop first!