Making Money by Saving!

Two weeks ago during super doubles at HT, they had M&Ms on sale buy 2, get 3 free. So we spent $1.98 for 5 bags of M&Ms. The bags we bought had movie contest ads on them. So we played and to our surprise, 4 out of the 5 bags were winners! We won five $3 off 1 movie ticket. We redeemed 2 of our coupons yesterday when we went to see "Something Borrowed." It was a really funny movie and the best part was we only paid $8 for the 2 of us to see it! Then we went to Chick-fila for dinner and we used 2 coupons there so we only spent $2.30 on dinner! We don't get a chance to go on dates often so it was definitely a treat!

I recently read somewhere that every family in America will spend an average of an additional $83 a month of groceries with every $1 per gallon gas goes up. That may not seem like a lot, but when you consider paying $45 a week on gas for 1 car and then another extra $83 on groceries that month, you're looking at maybe $363-$400 a month for gas and groceries and that's if you only spend $183 a month of groceries and only drive 1 car and spend $45 per week on gas. 

We know that the news is predicting gas to be at least $4 a gallon by the end of this summer. With Nick's job changing locations to RTP, we are no longer able to carpool and we are both driving 50 miles to work and back each day.  Needless to say we are adjusting our spending habits by using more coupons to save on groceries so that we don't fall into the statistic of spending $83 more on groceries.

It may seem like I'm obsessed, I wouldn't say that, but it may help to look at the facts - here is an exert from an article from the Wall Street Journal about couponing - "Someone who saves $25 a week will save more than $100 a month and $1,300 a year . Over a lifetime that can easily grow to $100,000 or more, even after accounting for inflation."Just last week alone I saved more than $75!

This coming week I plan on getting some free vitamins, bandages, and soap! With the free soap and bandages I plan on putting those in our Operation Christmas Child boxes this year! What a great feeling to know that we have given a simply bar of soap and bandages to a child in another country!