You Don't See That Every Day

I've probably already said this, but saving money is so much fun!! This week has been a great one in the savings department. I often go to Fred Meyer, and use my rewards card to rack up points. And then I use the points to get a few cents off my gasoline. And if you look at your receipt closely, there are occasionally surveys (which are super simple to fill out!) and you get more fuel points for doing it. So I did a couple of those in the past month. For whatever reason I had a ton of points on my card, and when I went to fill up my gas tank earlier this week, I got 20c off of each gallon!! Seriously, I wanted to do a little dance right there. So even though the price sign said 3.15 per gallon, I only paid 2.95! Wahoo! And then today, let me tell you - I saved over $13 at the grocery store just using coupons! Wowzer. I print most of my coupons out from Swagbucks , so not only am I getting the money saved at the grocery store, I am gaining swag points to use towards gift cards ...

For awhile now I have been following a certain blogger - Mavis. I try to read her blog regularly, not just for the great couponing hints, but she has the kind of humor I can relate to. ((Although I think she thought I was kidding when I suggested her next giveaway should be her coming to clean someone's kitchen. I thought it was a brilliant idea (wink wink))) So Mavis writes about how. she was able to feed her family of 4 on only one hundred dollars a month last year (hence the name of her blog ). Now there is probably no way I could feed the 7 of us on that amount; but reading her blog has made me more aware of my spending and grocery buying habits. AND THEN - cue the drum roll -  This morning I opened a wonderful email I had received from her. It made me hoop and holler and do a happy dance! The kids came running to see what was going on. Can you see why I was SO excited? See that word WINNER? Woohoo!! I did the happy damce because: A. I never win anything. Or so it see...

For the past few months I've been following this one blogger , who has an amazing knack for getting groceries and paying pennies ( onehundreddollarsamonth ). But as much as I read her (funny yet informative) blog, I still pay a lot of money every month for groceries. But then great things happen, like what I am about to share, that make me "see the light": Our boy's birthday was this week. So of course we went shopping the night before for birthday presents. We picked up an OSU T-shirt, blanket, and some Nerf darts, along with some air freshener (for our house, not a birthday gift). The 'original' total was $37.55. But then ..., I whipped out my gift card I received from listening to a bid on gutters (something we needed at the time) - bing - minus $25 and then I showed the clerk my rewards card, and the 2 coupons I had from a flyer - bing - minus 4 and then I laid down the Money Off coupon I got from the store for being a rewards card cu...