My First Couponing Experience

I haven't written in a while because I took the time to gather coupons from the Sunday newspaper, online, and through friends. It was hard! Glad I read some blogs that had beginners' guide to coupons because this was hard work! I spent several hours cutting coupons, organizing them, and matching them to what was on sale and I had to throw away a lot of coupons because they expired before I could even spend them. I really have to find a way to print as much coupons as possible without wasting them. Grr... still learning....



Above is some of the coupons that I was organizing last week (which took about 3-4 hours that one night to organize and I wasn't done!). I decided to go with the binder system because I could easily take it with me and I bought those photo plastic inserts to keep my coupons. I just have to be wary of the expiration dates. The only thing that annoys me about this is that the coupons keep sliding around the plastic inserts, so I have have to make sure that I don't lose them or that they don't spill out of my binder.

After several hours of trying to organize and match coupons to sale prices, I decided to take my first coupon trip to Walmart. There were several stores on my list but I decided to use Walmart's ad match to make it easier by saving gas and time.There were only a few items on my list because I just wanted to get my feet wet, but I was sooooo nervous! At the end of it, I felt very good and I'm going to go on another trip to take advantage of the sale and the coupons.

So here's what I bought:

-Lawry's Garlic Salt 11 oz $1.99 (sale price at Long's)
-Hoy Hoy Trap a Roach (stupid cockroaches in our kitchen are growing in numbers!) 5 Pack $2.99 (sale price at Walgreen's)
-Shick Quatro for Women $6.99 (sale price at Walgreen's after Register Discount of $3) but I had a coupon for Buy 1 Get 1 Free so I got two packs for $6.99
-Stayfreee Feminine care 14 pack for $2.49 (sale price at Walgreen's) minus $1.00 coupon = $1.49 each (I bought two)
-Dove Men + Care Deodorant/Antiperspirant (for Beb) at $3.99 (sale price at Don Quixote) minus a $2.00 off coupon = $1.99 (so sad I didn't have more coupons for this but it was a newspaper coupon so I only had 1 at the time!)
-Dove Body Wash and Deodorant/Antiperspirant 4 for $11.00 (sale price at Walgreens) minus 2 $1.00 coupons for the deodorant, 1 $0.75 coupon for one of the deoderant, and 1 $1.00 off coupon for the body was which came down to $7.25 for all four or ~$1.81 each

I didn't buy the other stuff on my list because they didn't have it (Carnation brand evaporated milk), I need to buy the refills which were $5 each (Air Wick Freshmatic Ultra Starter Kit even though the kit was only $1.39, I didn't want to spend more later), and I wasn't sure how to use the coupon with what they had (they had a lysol wipes pack which connected together and I had a coupon for $100 of 2).

I thought I did pretty well. I had a budget of $25 and I spent $30 (I bought one more garlic salt and one more Hoy Hoy, and I forgot to include tax in my original budget).


My thoughts on the experience: it took a lot of time to do this, but as Beb says, it's my first time and it gets easier later when I've developed a routine. I believe that I'd rather spend time than money since that 's all I really have. I'm not going to let it take over my life or anything, but I do have lots of time right now, so I might as well turn this into a hobby. What do you think?

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