Thank you Walgreens!

I just have to share the most wonderful blog I have found. There are amazing deals out there to be had. Warning though, it's addictive. Once you start finding free deals its hard to stop. This past week I was able to use coupons and store specials to get nearly $100 in free make up. This afternoon I worked out a plan to get some more items for free. Its all in the use of the coupons. I will be found on Sat night now clipping coupons from the Sun paper, organizing them and printing out the ones available online. There are so many! Some you have to sign in to a product's website. Like for Advil and Robitussin, all I had to do was sign up for their email newsletter and answer a survey question. Doing this allowed me to print a $3 off coupon for Robitussin and some $1 ones for Advil. By combining those with the specials available at CVS I will be able to get those items for free along with other things that I need. Crystal over at moneysavingmom.com has all the answers. I did sign up for the grocery game as well but found that I can do the job myself. When I used her spreadsheet I found that some of the deals were not available at my store. However, I feel that her service is great and if I just can't find the time to hunt through the circulars then I will resubscribe to the grocerygame. I took a picture of one of the deals I got this week. These products were from Tom Thumb. They have pretty good sales. If you bought 10 items of a specific kind you were able to recieve $10 off your total purchase. This ended up working out great because I had coupons for nearly everything on the list. The two muffins boxes were one dollar for both, and some of the other items were very cheap. I did learn to be more careful with my totals. It is really important to add up the sale to see how much you are paying out of pocket. The tyson anytizers seemed like a good deal but I should not have bought them. They were too much out of pocket. Total for the items was less than $20 though and the total before coupons was about $45, so I only paid half. Last night's trip to Tom Thumb was even better planned. So, my total was $65.73 and I paid $27.71. I did much better this time around. I definitly feel that it takes a lot of practice to make this work really well and also to save up enough coupons to make it work well. All told I am still under budget with my groceries. Dave is setting up an appt with one of those meat delivery places this week so we can get a week's worth of meat for free. I also am getting free produce from Karin every other week and that is helping a lot. Our grocery budget is one of the most flexible parts of our expenditures and I have a goal this year to spend the least amount possible.