My new hobby (finally a new blog post!!!)

After a long hiatus, I'm finally writing a new blog post woohoo!!!

I thought I would write a little blog post about my new-found hobby--saving money!!!

Some of you probably know that we are big Dave Ramsey fans and have followed his teachings (well, its really the Bible's teachings) about finances. I have since gradually become more and more thrifty when it comes to grocery and toiletry items. About a month ago, some friends turned me on to a couple of websites that have since turned my thriftiness into a hobby:

The Grocery Game (grocerygame.com), has saved me 50% off my groceries in the past month. I used to despise coupons because I would always take the time to clip them and forget to use them and they'd just expire, and I really thought I was saving the same amount of money buying generics (wrong!!). When you sign up for grocery game (its 5 bucks every 4 weeks), you choose the grocery store that you want to shop at and each week it prints up a list of rock-bottom-priced items. It also keeps track of all the coupons in the paper and tells you when to use them--no more expired coupons. This has drastically changed the way I grocery shop as I used to plan my meals for the week and go to the store and get what I needed for the week (at non-sale prices!!). Now I stock up on what is on sale that week, gradually building up a stockpile in my pantry from which I draw my meals from each week. You can see in the above picture that my stockpile is already growing (I scored a free can dispenser at the grocery store when they were changing them out one day. They were just going to throw them away!!)

Afullcup.com has introduced me to the wonderful world of Walgreens!! I used to avoid walgreens at all costs because I just thought they were an overpriced drugstore. Little did I know that they had these lovely little things called Register Rewards!! Register Rewards (RR) are little coupons that print out when you buy certain items. The coupons are like cash (you can only use them at walgreens, though!). Let me give you a little example of how you can actually be PAID to shop at walgreens and get all kinds of freebies!! This week walgreens had a sale on Theraflu--buy 3 bottles of Theraflu at $4.99 each and get $8 back in RR, so you're paying $7 bucks for 3 bottles of Theraflu, right? Nope, combine that with 3 $2 off coupons as well as a walgreen's store coupon ($6 off 3), and you actually get PAID 5 bucks to take three bottles of Theraflu!! Amazing! It gets even more fun as you can use the RR you get to buy other stuff that gives you RR and go on and on....The above picture is just a few of the freebies I've gotten from Walgreens in the past month! Granted, this coupon clipping and internet research for the deals and trips to walgreens take time (you only get 1 RR per product in each transaction so you can't buy like 9 theraflu's and get $21 back in RR), however, the payoff (free stuff that is normally pretty expensive to buy) is incredible! So, I'm really enjoying my new hobby!