We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Part 4

The first of August 2010, I decided that I did not want to go into labor again, so my doctor arranged to have me induced on the 31st. The 29th, we packed and finalized arrangements for our two older children, still just 1 and 2 years old. I went into labor than night, and had our last baby on the 30th. Apparently he just couldn't wait another day.
When we got home from the hospital, we couldn't have been more happy. Our older two children fell in love with him right from the first moment they saw him. Then we had to go to the store a couple days later to load up on diapers. It wasn't until that moment that realized we now had to pay for three children to be in diapers. THREE! I tried cloth diapers again, and quickly learned, I was not cut out for that... So we decided to cut other budgets to pay for the needed diapers there was no way around it.

At this point, our money was so tight that we were starting to feel like we were sinking. Fast. We had no idea how we were going to figure all this out. We started getting food on a regular basis from my mother, who fortunately lived next door, making meals stretch by adding fillers to meat when we cooked with meat. And after a little while, we just didn't buy meat at all. Our protein came from peanut butter, beans and eggs. We were making it work. The kids were happy, we were all healthy. Just tight in the wallet. But we were OK.

One day, I got a got a Facebook invite from my friend that said she was having a coupon class. I didn't even reply to it for a few days because I really didn't want to go. I didn't think I could handle sitting through another one of those lectures like you do for timeshares. I had heard enough of those pyramid schemes and wanted nothing to do with it, but at the same time, this was one of my very beast friends who I hadn't seen in months, and I didn't want her to think she was being ignored. So finally RSVPd with a "maybe". I figured that would show I wasn't ignoring her or turning her down, and if I just couldn't make it that night, she would understand because I had never said I would come come the first place. Well, it just shows you what a good friend she is when I say the very next day she emailed me and asked why I was a maybe. I used the excuse that I didn't know if I would be able to find a sitter that day... She told me to bring my kids and she would take them downstairs so I could listen to up the presentation. So I said I would really try.
That day, I made my husband get off work early so I didn't have to drag the kids along to something I knew I would just want to get out of as soon as I possibly could. Then, the instructor had us all give our names, our favorite place to shop and how many people we shopped for in the house. I said my name, that I shopped at mostly Costco and Wal-Mart and that I shopped for 5 people, with 3 in diapers. The instructor looked at me in disbelief that I had three little ones in diapers, then she just smiled and said, you need this! Throughout the lesson she taught us how we could pay pennies on the dollar for things, even get things for free, and better than free! I didn't understand it all, and I just got too excited during parts of her presentation to focus clearly. At the end of the lesson she told us that if we wanted to get the Sunday newspaper through her, she could sign us up that night so we could start getting our coupons as soon as possible. There was just something inside me that thought, you have to do this. I went in the other room, shaking hard, called my husband and told him that I was paying about $200.00 for a years worth of newspapers. That he needed to trust me and that I was writing the check out right then. I didn't have time to explain on the phone but I would talk to him all about it when I ugly home. I was shaking so bad, I am surprised that the check was legible enough to clear.

The first day my papers came, I was so embarrassed. I had four newspapers delivered. All I could think was, what are the neighbors thinking? I grabbed my papers, pulled out the coupon inserts and organized in about 30 minutes. Just looking st all the coupons I got in the paper, I was excited...

Conclusion coming tomorrow!

We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Part 1
We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Part 2
We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Part 3
We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Part 4
We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Conclusion