My Adventures In Couponing

Before I officially start my 2009 savings, let me tell you a little more about my shopping habits and plans for the upcoming year.(I use a lot of abbreviations so hang in there. There is a key for commonly used ones. Please excuse the ads as well…gotta get paid!)

I’m going to make it a goal to venture into new territory: Kroger, Harris Teeter(HT) and Food Lion(FL). I live in a small town where we only have a BiLo and CVS. The nearest Walgreens (Wags) and Walmart (ugh) are 30 min away and the nearest Target, Publix, Kroger, HT and FL are over an hour away.  I try to get to a grocery store other than BiLo weekly, but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it would cost more in gas to drive there than for what I would actually save. Unless I need to go to several stores, then I make a day out of it and it’s worth the trip!

Over the past year I have limited myself to only shopping at Publix and BiLo for groceries. I buy things like chicken breast, ground beef and bananas at Sams since it is much cheaper than purchasing small quantities. However the price of a membership may outweigh my savings, so that may end this year when the membership runs out.

My goals for 2009:

1. Explore other stores for more savings (Kroger, HT and FL)

2. Try to develop a spending budget for 2010. (Set a goal to only spend $x.xx on groceries for the entire year.)

3. Get more organized - Develop a system. (If you saw my computer desk you’d understand. The computer is swimming in coupon piles!)

4. Figure out exactly what I’d like to include in my budget. This year I will definitely include groceries, drug store spending and maybe department store spending. However I am not sure that I will include things like gift items, pet food (I only buy from a pet specialty store) etc. These things will be weeded out as I go.

Basically this year is a trial run of really keeping track of all my spendings/savings and I’m excited to share it with everyone. This past year I tracked a few months of grocery and drug store spending. My savings always outweighed my spending. I hope to inspire and help others to start couponing. The savings is amazing!

I’ve been planning my shopping trips for the week so starting Jan 1 I will start posting them!

Hooray! I finally have a blog to share my savings with everyone! I will begin my daily blog entries on Jan 1st! I’ll be posting good deals I find, how much I spend and most importantly how much I save.

I’m pretty busy right now with all the holiday festivities so for the rest of this year I will only be working on personalizing this page.

I’m very excited to start this and can’t wait to share my savings with all of you! Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in 2009!

Happy Holidays!!!