saving does not always mean coupons...

I've spent some time at home with my husband this week. Can I just say how much I love our house, our town and our life?! I know, you're tired of hearing about it. But seriously, being here and not having to go to work, feeling like a stay at home wife. It's nice. Not getting pay checks in the summer calls for saving, coupons and really paying attention Yesterday, I saved wonderfully on my groceries. I wanted to share how I did it.

First, I picked a couple of recipes and meals I wanted to make for dinner this week/weekend after seeing what items were on sale at the grocery store-

Thursday: Pasta and fresh broccoli - (pasta and alfredo sauce on sale this week)

Friday: angel hair pasta with fresh shrimp (caught in the sound right outside of the beach house!) and alfredo sauce - (only need alfredo for this recipe, and it's on sale!)

Saturday: mom's pot roast recipe with carrots, onions and potatoes in the crock pot -

Sunday: tomato soup and grilled cheese

Monday: maybe sushi?

Tuesday? leftovers...

Wednesday? Mexican night

I went to the Harris Teeter website, where I often will order my groceries online and pick them up the next day at the store. It's nice because it is only $4.99 extra and well worth not picking up the dang snacks that call your name when you walk down each isle! But that's not what I did this week, because I wanted to have groceries to be able to make dinner last night.

On the website they show all of their specials for the week: the buy on get one, the buy two get three, etc. When you type in "bread" it pulls up all the different breads and includes the prices and which ones were on sale. I always pick the least expensive and put it in my virtual cart. For bread, yesterday I picked the Sara Lee because it was on sale. I also saw that the strawberries were buy one get one and I put two of those in my cart. I kept going with all the things I needed to complete my meals this week as well as some breakfast staples. (We're peanut butter sandwich and fruit lunch people, lol).

My total was $43.43 online. (I did not put the mean in the cart because I wanted to pick the size I wanted). I wrote down everything from my cart and put it in order by section of the grocery store (it groups it when you pull up your cart online).

I had one coupon for my cereal that printed out at the grocery store the last time I was there, so I stuck it with my list and remembered to use it this time. Go me! haha.

Anyway - I know if I sat and went through coupons and bought way more than I actually needed and didn't eat as healthy, I could have likely saved more money. But, I find that the extreme couponing "savings" are usually frozen or junk food. I think I did pretty good for right above $50 for all of my groceries!

I will not list my entire purchase, but here are some of the savings:

Boxes of Barilla pasta = on sale 3 for $5

Fresh Broccoli = 50 cents off

Alfredo sauce = originally $2.95, I paid $1.27

Cereal =$3.50, with my coupon, I paid $2.00

In total with my VIC card savings, I saved $12.00- Total savings this year = $303.57

So again, not a huge "savings" with coupons, but just by watching sales, planning ahead and not putting extra "junk" in the cart, I am pretty proud of my grocery trip this week!

give it a try!

~let go laughing!