The feelings I felt that day, were mostly exhaustion from the long day before and the day I knew I would have. I looked proudly at my coupon file box, with my very first coupons inside all tucked away and organized so neatly. I took a deep breath and then put the box in my room and went on with the rest of my Sunday, going to Church, going to the in-laws' for dinner then bed as normal.
The next morning, I woke up and started my daily routine with unusual enthusiasm. Today I was going to get online and make my shopping list!!! I was going to go to the store and save so much money and our problems would be solved and we could breathe and we could stop having financial arguments and we could even start saving money...
I'm sure you can guess where this is all going...
Not 2 minutes after I turned on the computer, my heart sank, then plummeted and finally hit with full force, the wood floor. Tears were falling down my cheeks and I was grateful my husband was at work so he couldn't see.
WHAT HAD I DONE!?!?!
I just dropped a TON of money we didn't even have to SAVE money that we didn't even make by buying products on sale that I couldn't even find!
I couldn't handle Walgreens, it was far too complicated, and Rite Aid was worse! I started with Smith's because that store was pretty straight forward, but they didn't even have any great deals. The ones they did have I didn't have the coupons for and the coupons I did have still meant we would be paying more than we would be on generic items.
I was in such shock that I didn't even know how I was going to explain my huge mistake to my husband when he got home. I didn't know what we were going to do. I just dug an un-necessary grave for our whole family on some stupid whim of "
something inside me just knew I had to do this"? I had doomed our family! And it was entirely my own stupid fault. I KNEW from the beginning that I didn't even want to go that stupid class, that it was all just some stupid scheme. And I ignored that.
My husband came home from work that night looking worried at how worried I looked. I told him what had happened and I started crying all over again, and I braced fr the wave of anger or frustration from him that I knew had to be coming. I buried my face in his chest and held him tight, waiting for angry words or words of counsel... then I felt him start to shake...
Was he really so mad that he was shaking?...
I pulled my face up to look at him, and saw he was LAUGHING!
He then said something along the lines of, "Babe! It's been one day! Of course you aren't going to be able to get all the deals right away, you have one week of coupons. Just do what you can to start with, it will be fine."
He was right of course. I do tend to freak out at the slightest drop of a hat. He then reassured me that if in a few months, if we still weren't able to get what we thought, that I had permission to freak out at that point. I agreed to keep a level head until then.
Slowly but surely, I learned the ropes. I learned the ins and outs of couponing and eventually, I even figured out how to work Walgreens! In the first few weeks of trying to use coupons, find the deals and get free stuff, there were times I would come home SO FRUSTRATED because I messed up on the purchase and I spent WAY more than I thought I would. Sometimes I even ended up paying more than I probably would have before I used coupons at all...
But eventually, after trial and error, and realizing that we had to perfect and fine tune the coupons system I was taught just so that it fit OUR family for OUR individual and unique needs.
Now, months later, we are there!!! Our grocery budget is officially less than half of what it was before. I need to be honest though. When I say we cut our previous grocery budget by 56%, that isn't entirely accurate. 56% less, means we spend only 44% of we used to... but that 44% we now spend, we actually budget more in with that.
In that 44%, we now have a meat budget, we didn't hardly ever buy meat before. we also now have a $70.00 a month clothing budget that didn't have before! If I only counted in our current budget the things we used to buy, we actually are saving 67%.
We cut our Grocery Bill by 67%!!!
We have achieved financial freedom, and hope to be completely debt free by the middle of next year! And now, we know that it is possible!!!
We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Part 1We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Part 2We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Part 3We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Part 4We Cut Our Grocery Bill by 56% - Conclusion
Doesn't that look yummy?!
