Weekly Spending Summary

This was for this past week. It was a fairly average week as you'll see. :)

Total Spent: $34.59
Total Saved with Coupons: $51.48
Total Saved with Sales: $63.59
Total Saved: $115.07

Rite Aid: $0 ($0.29 spare change)
Saved with Coupons: $43.49
Saved with Sales: $24.79

The Nivea was free with a rain check and coupon. I was pretty happy about getting it since there haven't been many free deals on men's body wash and Vince was almost out. The Oral-B toothbrush was also a rain check item.

CVS: $0 (gift card)
Saved with Coupons: $7.99
Saved with Sales: $2.80

I would have spent a whopping $0.08 if I had not had a gift card. :)

Darrenkamps: $34.59
Saved with Sales: $36.00

Time to stock up on meat! I bought approximately 18 lbs. of chicken tenders and also some loose sausage that was in the markdown bin.

Weekly Spending Summary

I'm behind on posting as you know. This is for the week of 6/12 to 6/18.

Total Spent: $24.16
Total Saved with Coupons: $38.68
Total Saved with Sales: $28.13
Total Saved: $66.81

CVS: $0 (gift card)
Saved with Coupons: $20.48
Saved with Sales: $4.98

I apparently forgot to take a picture of this purchase. I got: 1 CVS 9 volt battery, 1 Motrin PM 20 ct., 1 Schick Hydro 5 razor, and 1 Zyrtec 5ct. I would have paid $1.97 for this had I not used a gift card that we earned through our credit card rewards program.

Rite Aid: $7.19
Saved with Coupons: $9.20
Saved with Sales: $11.12

I've done more transactions lately at Rite Aid that qualify for Single Check Rebates than UPRewards, so I'm a little low on them to help me pay for my purchases. It felt funny to pay this much out of pocket at Rite Aid. Haven't done that in a long time.

Giant: $0.99
Saved with Coupons: $3.00
Saved with Sales: $3.58



Weis: $2.00
Saved with Coupons: $6.00
Saved with Sales: $8.45


Walmart: $12.29

Vince forgot to get milk from the local farm we usually buy it at, so I paid double what we normally pay and got a gallon at Walmart. I can't believe how expensive milk is!

Aldi: $1.69
This was for a bag of spinach.

Life...

Logan helping fold washcloths

Oh my. I never planned to take a blogging break, but I guess I kind of just did, didn't I? Life has been wild around here the last couple of weeks. We've had Summer Bible School (which we were in charge of), 2 sets of overnight guests, a bunch of green beans (I got 14 1/2 qt.) to put in the freezer and all sorts of other things. I kept thinking I'd get a post or two done but simply had no extra time. And so this blog just was kind of quiet.

And on top of all the busyness I wasn't feeling just amazing either. Those of you that know me in real life know this already, but we are excited about welcoming another little person to our family in December. Yes, I'm pregnant! I'm starting to feel better but the last number of weeks have been a bit of a drag with being extremely tired and feeling kind of yucky too. I'm glad that seems to be a thing of the past.

While we are excited, after losing our newborn daughter almost 8 months ago, we also feel some trepidation. Eleni's condition was a rare thing (it occurs in 1 in 60,000 births) so we really have no reason to worry about it happening again. But we are just much more aware that something could go wrong. And so we are constantly having to consciously choose to trust God and rest in Him. However, it's comforting to know that if something happens again, God will walk with us then just like he has the past 8 months. We won't be alone and we'll have His grace to help us get through it.

So that is what's been happening around here. I hope to get a couple of posts up in the next several days, but I have more green beans coming, possibly some blueberries too and we are looking forward to having some family come spend the weekend with us as well. So, it doesn't look like life will be slowing down.

Blessings to each of you!

"Working" at popping bubble wrap while I did green beans :)

Birthday Freebies

It's our little family's birthday season- June and July- and I thought I'd post an updated list of birthday freebies. Since I've discovered these, it is one of the highlights of my birthday. Only problem is, you can gain a lot of weight if you do them all! :)

* Baskin Robbins- Sign up for the Birthday Club and you'll get a coupon for a free scoop of ice cream for your birthday.
* Burger King- Your child can receive a free kid's meal on their birthday when you sign them up for Club BK.
* California Pizza Kitchen- Sign your child up for CPKids and they can enjoy a free kids meal.
* Dunkin' Donuts- If you have a Dunkin' Donuts gift card, you can register it for the DD Perks Rewards and among other things, you'll get a free medium beverage of your choice for your birthday.
* Krispy Kreme- If you live near a Krispy Kreme you may be able to get a dozen free doughnuts on your birthday! Simply call your local store ahead of time to see if they participate. (I've never tried this one since we don't have a store near us, but I'm told many locations do offer this yummy treat!)
* Panera Bread- Sign up for a Panera card and you'll get a coupon for a free sweet or pastry.
* Red Robin- Sign up for Red Robin's e-club and you'll get a free burger on your birthday.
* Ruby Tuesday- Join Ruby Tuesday's So Connected club and you'll get a free hand crafted burger- no purchase necessary- on your birthday. I couldn't believe it last year when they let me choose any burger I wanted and gave me fries and a drink too!
* Starbucks- Have a Starbucks gift card? Register it here and one of the perks you'll get is a coupon for a free Starbuck's birthday drink. It might be worth getting a $5 gift card and registering it just for this! :)

Two deals that are not quite as good but that I'll mention anyway...
* Cold Stone Creamery- Join their birthday club and receive a coupon for a free treat with the purchase of another one.
* Dairy Queen- Join the Blizzard Fan Club and receive a coupon for a Buy 1 Get 1 free blizzard on your birthday.

And two non-food related deals...
* Magazines.com- If you create an account at Magazines.com they send you one of these offers and you can then redeem it for a $5 check. Not a bad birthday gift in my mind! Just be watchful, the subject line of the email just says something related to birthday and nothing about a coupon.
* Toys R Us- Sign your child up for the Toys 'R Us Birthday Club (click "Birthday Club" at the top of the page) and they'll receive a free gift (rumored to be a $3 Toys 'R Us gift card) on their birthday.

Have you ever done any of these freebies? Do you know of others? I'd love to hear about them!

Obtaining Coupons: Newspaper Inserts- Part 1

One of the most popular way to get manufacturer's coupons is by purchasing a Sunday paper. Most Sunday papers will include a set of coupon inserts- anywhere from one to three inserts is typical. The three most common inserts are: Smartsource (abbreviated SS), Red Plum (RP) and Proctor & Gamble (PG). Occasionally you will also find General Mills (GM) inserts as well.

The frustrating thing with Sunday coupon inserts is that not all papers carry the inserts AND the inserts vary greatly with each paper. For instance, Lancaster Intel might have a coupon for $0.75/1 Colgate toothpaste; while the Washington Post coupon for Colgate toothpaste might be $1/1. So if you are using coupon databases to help you figure out where to find coupons for a certain product, you might see that the 6/5 RP insert was supposed to have a certain coupon in it, however your insert is totally missing that coupon. That is because some inserts DID get the coupon, however, obviously not all of them did and you were one of the "lucky" ones that didn't. :)

The spine of one my inserts- I was hoping you could read it but...

Maybe you are wondering how to know just what week your newspaper insert is from. If you look on the spine of the insert, it will say something like this: Advertising Supplement to Washington Post 6/5/2011. That simply means that the insert was from the Washington Post newspaper and it was for Sunday June 5.

You can either purchase the Sunday paper at your local store/newspaper stand or you can subscribe to it. If you are purchasing the paper every Sunday, you may want to check this schedule to see if it is worth purchasing and to decide how many papers you want to purchase. Some weeks there are no inserts so you'd be wasting your money on a paper.

If you are planning to regularly purchase a Sunday paper, I'd highly recommend subscribing to it, as you can save quite a bit. I recently called up our local newspaper and asked them what the best subscription rate was that they could give me for just the Sunday paper. It was $0.88/week as opposed to the $1.75/week that is charged at newsstands.

What tips do you have for getting coupons via the newspaper?

Did you miss the other posts in this series? If so, here are links to them- Contacting Companies; Websites; Coupon Trading; and Store Emails & Fliers.

Weekly Spending Summary

Not much to say about my spending this week...just a normal week really.

Total Spent: $24.15
Total Saved with Coupons: $54.49
Total Saved with Sales: $32.47
Total Saved: $86.96

CVS: $0 (gift card)
Saved with Coupons: $26.00
Saved with Sales: $19.57



Rite Aid: $3.30
Saved with Coupons: $27.49
Saved with Sales: $10.03


Giant: $4.50
Saved with Coupons: $1.00
Saved with Sales: $2.87

No, I didn't buy the one bottle of dressing half used. I just didn't have time to shoot this picture until I had already used part of it. As you'll read below, I didn't plan ahead to well and so I had to pay almost full price for these items. That's just life sometimes.

Aldi: $16.35

I bought some unexpected items because I had to take some food to our church fellowship dinner and I also wanted to make an awesome taco salad (I really should post the recipe) for Vince's birthday meal and I hadn't planned ahead at all. :)

Free Audiobook: A Place of Healing by Joni Eareckson Tada

Christian Audio's free book of the month is A Place of Healing by Joni Eareckson Tada.

Thanks Money Saving Mom!