Wanna save some $$$

No, I'm not going to try to sell you anything and I'm not getting paid to tell you anything....buuuut when a girl finds a good deal she has to share right?

A few weeks ago a coworker of Matt's introduced us to a shopping program. As Matt was telling me about it, I was like "hmmm, okay, sure." I'm not kidding you people, this new way of shopping has saved us hundreds of dollars in the 3 weeks we have used it!

Check out the website Pocket You Dollars and see for yourself. It's actually very basic and works mainly on matching sale items with coupons. You're like, "well, duh, I already do that." I thought we did too. Carrie the magic worker behind it all is amazing and wants to help people keep their money while getting what they need. I have been talking lots to Tina this week as she prepared to try this out for the first time and she was impressed!

Reading through the website will give you a better understanding about everything so I'm just going to break down the basics of what we have found. We are still learning all about it, so there is probably lots more to it too so if you have been using Carrie's site or plan on trying it out let me know what you find or any other little secrets. Also, the main money saver we are experiencing is shopping at Rainbow on Wednesday, when they have double coupon days. There are lots of other places but that has by far saved us the most. Some of the other stores she uses are: Target, CUB, Walgreens and CVS.

Seriously, the whole idea behind this is matching coupons with ads. Carrie finds coupons and deals all over the Internet and tells you where to go to get each one to print. Also, each week we buy 4 Sunday papers and cut out all the coupons. Yes, you start accumulating a lot! We bought a big accordion file and separated each slot into a different category to help keep everything as organized as possible.


I'm not going to lie, it does take some extra time and organizing but even after just a few weeks I am starting to get into my own groove and finding what works for me. So here's the Rainbow deal (and where some of the extra time comes in.) Wednesday nights you can double your best 5 coupons with a purchase of $25 or more. I make 4 lists, making sure each one is at least $25 and has at least 5 coupons. Then we meet Matt and we both take one list and go through, take our stuff out to the car and then grab the other two lists and do it again = 4 trips through the store. (You don't have to go four times, you can go as many as you want but we go four times to maximize the doubling coupon thing - 4 trips = 20 doubled coupons.) Is any of this making sense? Try it, it works! The second week after we went through I looked at Matt and was like, "This is an adrenaline rush!" I know, I'm a dork but who would have known you could be happy about spending money at the grocery store? Okay, blah blah blah I could talk forever...can you tell? :)

Here's what we got today at Rainbow...

All of that food, 4 boxes of toothpaste, body wash and even diapers for just over $45. Our savings? $92.63. This weeks was actually not as good as last weeks since there was already several of the major things on our list gone. The nice thing is you really don't have to change how you eat, at least we didn't. Most of the stuff we get now is what we would have gotten before. Except maybe the chicken nuggets and it was certainly not me who threw those Ramen noodles in our cart! (Ahem...Matt.) I do have to say though, if you only eat organic this definitely won't work as well. But like I said there are lots of other non-food offers at Target, Walgreen etc. We are getting things better than free (yes, they PAY you to buy it!) at some places! Crazy!?

Here's our receipts from last week...Rainbow and CUB. And this week I also went to Target and spent $40 and saved $20. Pretty cool huh? Our freezer and pantries have never been so full and we are saving literally hundreds of dollars a month. Also, I have been buying some of the stuff we wouldn't eat or don't need (because it's literally free or close to it) and plan on donating it to our food shelter.

Sick of me talking yet? Cause I could go on. Just kidding, I'm done. :) Check it out. And if you have already been following Carrie at Pocket Your Dollars (first, shame on you for not telling me all about it :)) what are things you have noticed or done or changed or tricks you have found?

Happy shopping! :)