Coupons, coupons, coupons

I got the coupon bug BAD over the summer. I wanted to cut down on our $400/month grocery "budget" after seeing MOST of our credit card transactions were groceries. My goal is $200/month although I am still working at consistency and often at $260-$300.

I stumbled upon my FREE FREE FREE couponing site doing a yahoo search for "coupons". I found http://www.pinchingyourpennies.com/ and I was HOOKED.

The sites gives complete lists of weekly deals (advertised and not) for each major grocer in my area (Safeway, Fry's, Albies & Basha's for me). There are numerous state forums so all groceries chains are there. Volunteer moderators put the lists together from a massive coupon database that has newspaper insert coupons as well as Internet printables.

What you get is a sheet where you can click/select/highlight items you want & then "shrink" the list to print out just those items with ad price, matched coupon(s) and final price. It is AWESOME.

I've gotten good enough that I now look for "holy grails" every week - items that are FREE (oh yes they exist!) or ones that are a) on sale, b) have a "store" coupon and c) have a manufacturer's coupon = MEGA cheap. I try to spend no more than $25/store each week and I even MADE $9 profit from CVS!

It is fun (and addicting) every week to take part in the "treasure hunt". People share insider details on the forum which is where many of the unadvertised deals come from.

My new goal is to wean myself off my addiction to shop every week and instead eat out of our pantry, which is EXTREMELY full from couponing, deplete it for a week (or two) and then shop/stock again. That should get us down to $200/month on groceries easy and help rotate our food stock which is really important.