{"id":397,"date":"2010-01-07T16:43:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-07T16:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coffeefreakdesigns.com\/teenstotsandeverythinginbetween\/?p=397"},"modified":"2010-01-07T16:43:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-07T16:43:00","slug":"couponing-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/?p=397","title":{"rendered":"Couponing- The Beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the reason that I feel a strong &#8220;push&#8221; to start this blog to share how I am saving money. I don&#8217;t make New Year Resolution but this year I did set several goals:<\/p>\n<p> Get out of debt except for the house and car.<br \/>              Finish the addition. (This will be a whole blog of it&#8217;s own, I got to<br \/>                   have something to write about)<br \/>              Go on a week long vacation to the beach.<\/p>\n<p>All of these involve money. At this point both DH and I agree that I NEED to be home. So me working more is not an option for my family right now so saving money is the way that I am helping in achieving our goals. So couponing and shopping sales,consignments,and ebaying all help me save money. There are a couple of &#8220;catches&#8221; for me using coupons. First I HATE going to the grocery store. Second is DH&#8217;s pay schedule. Third trying to get all 3 of the little one in a car and then shopping well that is just impossible by myself. So I am working to make this as easy as possible and to use as little time as possible. Looking at our expenses for 2009 on average we were spending $579 a month on food. This was our largest bill except for the house payment. So it made sense for me to start working on reducing that bill. I was shopping sales but not using coupons. I &#8220;tried&#8221; to only go shopping twice a month.<\/p>\n<p>So now that I have written where we started, here is what has changed. First we began ordering Angel Food. If you are not familiar with Angel Food, check out their site (<a href=\"http:\/\/angelfoodministries.com\/\">www.angelfoodministries.com<\/a>) I budget $100 a month to purchase food this way. Angel Food has no income requirement and it is a nation wide program. The site will help you find something close to you. The food is AWESOME!  We regularly buy a signature box and a fruit and veggie box. Most months, we also purchase one or more of the meat\/chicken boxes. Now for the coupons. I started by going through my mother&#8217;s Saturday paper, there is no Sunday paper in this town. I clipped all the coupons I &#8220;thought&#8221; I would use. I organized them in a notebook using baseball card holders into categories.  I daily check these websites,  (<a href=\"http:\/\/bugetsavingmom.com\">www.budgetsavingmom.com <\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/southernsavers.com\">Southernsavers.com<\/a> and<a href=\"http:\/\/caringwithcoupons.com\"> Caringwithcoupons<\/a>. I prints lots of the coupons, but only ones I know I will probably use and have signed up for anything free that is useful!<br \/>So far I have shopped at Food Lion, CVS and one trip to Harris Teeter for &#8220;super doubles.&#8221; At budgetsavingmom, she has a guide on how to get started. This is an excellent way to start. I did save up my coupons for about a month before really starting but I don&#8217;t see any need in buying multiple papers to get the coupons.  I am trying to have the smallest expense up front so I have not bought anything extra. This is the start, my plan is to post another post on my actual shopping this week!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the reason that I feel a strong &#8220;push&#8221; to start this blog to share how I am saving money. I don&#8217;t make New Year Resolution but this year I did set several goals: Get out of debt except &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/?p=397\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-angel-food","category-coupons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ySyX-6p","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}