Coupon Adventures Week #5

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

2/19/12

Weekend #5

After Couponing for 5 weeks now, I am beginning to create a stock pile. A stock pile is a collection of items that have been purchased because they were on sale and/or a coupon was used. These are items that were not necessarily needed currently, so they need to be stored somewhere.

I have chosen to keep my stock pile in our basement. My husband built a shelving unit. I put the extra items in baskets that I have around the house or old diaper box and place the boxes on the shelves.

I have been trying to keep‘like’ items together, such as baking goods, cleaning products, breakfast items, etc., on the shelf.

Keeping the‘like’ items together helps in 2 ways 1) I am able to easily find items when I need to replenish the supply in our pantry and 2) I am able to easily see how many we have of a particular item, so I know if I need to purchase more or not.

Last week I mentioned that I was beginning to get a little discouraged with Couponing because I had set a personal goal of walking out of Meijer without spending $100.00. Up until last week I had not been able to accomplish this goal. Not only did I finally accomplish the goal of spending less than $100.00 last week at Meijer, but I accomplished the goal this week as well! In fact, I spent less at Meijer this week then I spent last week.

This week I’m trying something a little different to display my savings. Rather than listing all of the items I purchased how much I saved on each individual item I have chosen to simply share how much I saved at each individual store. I shopped at 4 different stores. The savings break down from each store can be seen below.

CVS Savings: $4.00

Walgreens Savings: $7.60

Marsh Savings: $12.08

Meijer Savings: $14.39

Total Savings (at all 4 stores): $38.07 Total Spent (at all 4 stores): $89.21

What I learned:

1. When items are listed in sale the CVS sale ad are not always actually in the store.