Romance By Catherine: It isn't what you make... it's how you spend it.

Monday, January 18, 2010

It isn't what you make... it's how you spend it.


It isn't what you make, but how you spend it.

Have you ever heard this before? I know that many people made new year goals to trim the budget and keep their financial house in order in the coming year. This blog was designed with this goal in mind.

Today... I looked out my window to a rare rainy day... *see picture above* and after seeing the weather report for the next week I realized I'm going to have the opportunity to complete all kinds of 'rainy day' projects. I found my stack of coupons and thought it was time to weed through my stash and pull out all those 09 explorations. Then I realized that I'd been a bit lack on my coupons over the last several month. With two boys, nearly 14 and 11 who eat like small grazing animals on a farm, its high time I started keeping on top of my grocery savings.

Oh... yes! I'm one of those! STOP... Don't stop reading... because contrary to popular belief, saving big time cash at the grocery store isn't a time consuming job. I spend maybe 20 min cutting coupons every week and only 20 min printing out my list and getting ready for the store.

I only use coupons from my local Sunday Times. I don't receive the mailers from the stores and I seldom print coupons... I alphabetize my coupons by brand name and this saves a lot of time. This is how I shop.

http://www.thegrocerygame.com/

I found Teri's list several years ago. The first year I did this I wrote down how much money I saved. I found it almost a challenge to get half my groceries for free. In one year I saved over $6,000 dollars. That isn't a joke and I don't own stock in the above website. I even had a Thanksgiving Dinner at my home for 20 people and spent only $50 on the meal. Most of that was wine. lol

Lets round up my time spent on the coupon game to one hour a week. With 52 weeks in the year and a savings of 6K... that is $115 of savings for that hour. So yeah... it's worth it. My day job doesn't pay $115 per hour. Does yours? Think of all the great books you could buy...

6 comments:

Rachel E. Moniz said...

I am so checking out that site!
I love to save money! I have cut my electric bill by over HALF just by keeping the TV and satellite dish plugged into a power strip and and turning it off.

Thanks for the new challenge, Catherine!

Catherine Bybee said...

I wanna hear about your savings, Rachel.

Emma Lai said...

I'm a lackadaisical coupon clipper, but I love saving money. I save anywhere from $10 to $20 on a $100 of groceries. It's definitely worth it!

Helen Hardt said...

I've always been too lazy to do the coupon thing, but I'm the daughter of a mother raised by a depression era mother. Thriftiness has been drilled into my head from day one! I'll definitely check out the site!

Kaye Manro said...

No my job doesn't pay that well! And this does sound like time well spent!

Catherine Bybee said...

Saved 50% on my bill this week. That was over $60.00 of FREE FOOD!
I'm just saying....