Ok, sue me, I missed the “one week” post. I couldn’t even keep on it for one week. Ah well, I’m back now with some new information on saving money.

So this weekend was bad. We didn’t do anything except sit around and literally kill time. Michael played Warcraft all weekend and me? Well, I watched a lot of internet TV and some videos, while playing some Fable 2. Oh, also, I reorganized my Hard Drives. Yah. What a scream. I did manage to find, however, that I missed 90’s alternative music more than I realized. Here’s a list of some songs I threw onto my Creative Zen to jam too. There’s some stuff from the early 2000’s too, but that’s OK, it’s all pretty similar. Sometimes you forget good music exists from the past, or beyond your current listening scope, so I guess I can’t call the weekend a total wash. At the very least, it shows me that I need to find out some cool, free things to do in Phoenix, or anywhere really. That should make for a good post soon.

However, I do have something interesting to report. Over the weekend, we made our weekly meal plan, and went to the store to aquire sweet and savory goodness. This is the first time we set out with coupons in tow as well. After picking up all the necessities, making sure everything we bought was actually marked down through the use of the store’s club card*, we owed approximately $80. Not a bad deal for picking up about 3 boxes of cereal, toothpaste, shampoo and body soap (hey, that stuff adds up with normal produce and juice). Handed over the coupons and the bill went down another $15! Man, had I known coupons could save me this much money on things I buy anyway I would have started using them a long time ago.

All said and done we saved over $50 between coupons and the “club card”. Which I don’t really consider savings at all, except that we bought the stuff on sale.

So you can get coupons from the Sunday paper, obviously, but there are more unconventional means to getting them. If you don’t mind websites that install programs, I’ve been using Coupons.com and I’ve found some good deals. I’ve used the coupon dispensers in the stores for products they want you to buy. They don’t double those, but hey, they add up too, and you can take one and wait for a sale to add to the savings. Especially if it’s something you buy regularly. Even the registers at most places spit out coupons based on what you buy. Normally? Junk. Sometimes you can score big. I got 50% off Benefiber (comes in handy when you’re trying to eat healthy, believe me). Turns out the coupon was worth $5. Not bad for a piece of paper, yes?

This isn’t just limited to grocery shopping either. If you plan on buying anything online, you can probably find some kind of promotional code for almost any store. They’ll change every so often, so you have to search, but a lot of times you can find some kind of sale for “members” which get leaked to the interwebs. Keep an eye on the sales and you’ll be shocked on what you can find.

Some websites I like for these particular sales are:
Ben’s Bargains
Slick Deals
Price Watch
and to a lesser extent: Woot.com

*Shoppers Club Cards can, in fact, track who you are and what you buy. However, you’re not absolutely required to be honest about your name, address, and phone number when you get them. Most times, you won’t even have to fill out the form for one. Just take the card and go. I have never provided my name and phone number for any of the grocery cards I’ve carried.