I knew that my CVS trip was gonna be crappy, when I saw that my store was completely out of the free Colgate t/paste. This was really strange to me, because there's not many couponers that frequent my closest store.
Well of course things got worse. When I went to checkout, I realised that I forgot my new $25 CVS gc at home...grrr (I placed that new gc in my purse, the minute I got home...lol). I only had the old gc that has a balance of 60c on it. Then the cashier couldn't get the silly thing to scan and it wouldn't work when she manually entered the number (obviously not entering correct number, cause it worked last week). I just told her not to worry about it and that I'd pay cash.
I started the week with $20 EBs
1 x Colgate $3.99
1 x Softsoap $3.49
2 x Mitchum $5.98
3 x Revlon lipstick $20.97
1 x Irish Spring bw $3.99
1 x Hershey cookie $3.79
Less 10/40 (10.00)
Less Softsoap q (0.75)
Less 2 Mitchum qs (4.00)
Less 3 Revlon qs (9.00)
Less Irish Spring q (1.00)
Less Hershey CRT (2.00)
Less EBs (13.00)
Total incl tax $4.06
Got back $11.75 EBs ($2 Colgate, $1.75 Softsoap, $2 Irish Spring, $6 Revlon). I now have a total of $18.75 EBs to spend on my next trip.
I should also get another $3 Beauty EB, since most of today's item qualifies for beauty spending. I included the Hershey cookies, to replace the free Colgate t/paste. Don't know what I'm gonna do with the cookies yet, since we're not Hershey fans.
I could've used my big $7 EBs to lower my OOP, but I had smaller ones that were expiring soon and wanted to use those first. And today I received another 10/40 email. Happy dance. I love all this free money that CVS sends me every week, just to shop. I will load it to my card on Sunday, so that it only expires on Thursday.
I realised today that we are in good shape with groceries, HBA, cleaning, clothes, shoes, accessories, household items, thanks to stockpiling. There's not much that we need these days, so I'm gonna start cherry picking groceries. Of course I'll still continue doing the drugstore deals. Who doesn't love free stuff and why would I waste the extra $10 that CVS sends me every week?
I'm really happy to be back to stockpiling and drugstore shopping again. I haven't done much couponing since that stupid TLC show ruined things for those of us who just wanted to help our families save money. Then we stopped getting RP inserts, so that was another hit. However, I try to make things work with the coupons we do get. We have a decent stockpile (nothing like I used to have) and DH is happy that I'm keeping the cost low. Win-win
I also redeemed 2 gcs this week. DH got a $20 Walmart gc on his IGC account and I got $25 Target on my account, so we're $45 richer...lol
I also like to save my $1 and $5 bills and change. We've been doing this for years. I figure that if I don't have the money in my wallet, then I can't or won't spend it. So I keep separate jars for everything. One year I threw DH a birthday party at a restaurant, with just my $5 bill savings. I paid the tab for everyone. There wasn't a whole lot of people, but those who drink know that alcohol increases the bill by a lot. I actually still have money left after footing the party bill and tip. So it definitely helps to save all those little bits.
I started my $5 savings in December. I was switching purses the other day and found 2 x $5 bills in the new purse. Ka-ching. To date I have saved
$1 bills - $21
$5 bills - $90
Not a whole lot of money, but if I let it accumulate for the rest of the year, I'll end up with a decent amount. I don't know what I'll do with these funds yet, since there's nothing that we currently need. Last year we did so well with earning gcs, that we didn't even need the coins that I saved. I went to the Coinstar machine (no way I'm rolling coins. I just don't have the time) and cashed in some of it for a Red Robin gc. Those coins paid for 2 trips to RR for our family of 3. Not bad for just dumping our change into a jar all year long.
I'm also considering doing the 52 week Savings Challenge again. I like to save $27 per week when I do that challenge. The first few months are usually easy, because you're saving smaller amounts. Most people have a hard time saving those larger $40+ per week, that's why I've decided on $27 every week. That comes close to the same total amount and is much easier to save.
Do you save change or bills? Are there any other ways that you save money for your family?
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