We're Saving Green

It has been a while since I posted about our new shopping habits (well, I guess they're not so new anymore ... we've been at it for almost a year now), but thought I'd share today's savings. The grand total of these items at this week's CVS sale price is $42.15. Using coupons and CVS bucks, I paid $3.65 out of my pocket and $2.58 of that was for sales tax.

We used to spend over $100 a week at WalMart for our groceries and household products. Now we only shop at CVS, Walgreens and Publix and usually spend less than $30 a week. We have a stock of pretty much everything and laugh at ourselves because we no longer buy certain items (toothpaste, eye contact solution, and several others) unless we actually make money on them. Free (+ tax) is not good enough for a tube of toothpaste anymore.

At first we did devote quite a bit of time to preparation and shopping. Now that we've had practice it probably takes us 30 - 45 minutes to go through the adds, write up our lists and gather our coupons. We usually go to Publix on Thursday afternoon, which usually takes 30 minutes, 45 max. I go to CVS and Walgreens on Sunday, which can take up to an hour depending on the week. That is a total of 2.5 hours a week, which I think is definitely worth the savings of about $280 a month.

It really is super easy once you figure out the basics of couponing. Check out the link on the right of my blog to SoutherSavers. She taught us everything we know!