In early January, I saw a show on TV, in which profiled people using coupons, matching them with store sales, and walking out with over 90% savings and lots of item. This show led me to a couponing forum http://www.weusecoupons.com/
At this point I decided that I was gonna give this a try. i shopped mainly at Aldi’s and Kroger’s. And thus began getting Sunday papers, and clipping all the coupons out of them. I created an account at WUC, and began watching all the posts, seeing the deals and was amazed! This cant be! As the weeks went by, I had more coupons, and the deals that were being posted had the coupons I had! So little by little I started saving.
By the beginning of February, I ventured out into the world of CVS, I shopped there occasionally for things like milk and eggs, but nothing more. I thought their prices were quite high. I soon learned that they have several items in the weekly sale that generated ECB’s (Extra Care Bucks) that the prices of the items were even cheaper. It did take me a couple weeks to generate ECB’s in larger amounts, but if you pay attention to the sale ads you can get many items for FREE….yes I said free. How? If a product is on sale for $2.99 and generates a $2.99 ECB, then it is FREE and you just have to pay the sales tax on that item, and then you have $2.99 ECB’s to spend on something else. Now if you have a coupon for that sale item…say $.50/1 that lowers your out of pocket (OOP) cost to $2.49, making it a money maker (MM) because you will get a $2.99 ECB! yay! The key with CVS that I have found is to get the ECB deals, use coupons, and then use your ECB to pay the transaction down to the tax…thus resulting in the rolling of the ECB’s into another transaction.
My point of this blog is to post the deals that I get, and my savings, so others can see! I will be adding pictures and my OOP costs to each post and the coupons I used. My plan is to create a stockpile of items, HBA, Laundry, Cleaning, and some food items that will last my family for about 6 months. This way I don’t have to do the dreaded rush to the store because of a last minute out of something like laundry soap and no one has clean clothes. I also want to make my children’s transition out of the home a positive thing, by teaching them how to use coupons, and being able to provide the simple items for them like deodorant, toothpaste, soaps for free and knowing it cost me very little!
I am by NO means a pro! I am still learning. There are so many other people that have been doing this a lot longer! I will post the links to the sites that I visit. But one thing I do love, is the fact that ad scans for most stores come out a week or so early as well as a coupon preview for the upcoming week, so I know what the deals will be and what coupons I will need to make the deals work best for my family!
Enjoy!
learning2coupon 
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