So much for my little experiment, somewhat of a failure. Ok, a total failure, but interesting nonetheless. Back to what I know, being frugal.

Another great site to check out is www.couponmom.com. It has a really great tool to show you what is on sale at a few select stores and what coupons are available for the sale items. The original price, sale price, price after coupon, date the coupon was in the paper, and the percentage of savings are listed. It's really handy to make sure you're not missing out on any great deals.

Our economy is getting scarier by the minute. People who have never had to budget before are learning how very quickly. I'm one of them. I've always been great at getting a deal, but until now, I never really needed one. It's really frustrating to know that no matter how willing you are to work, these days there's just not enough work to go around to produce the income you had formerly. The financial adjustments are torture. Unfortunately at our house we waited too long to make the necessary changes. We are in DEEP. For my next trick....I need to find a way to make income either from home or with a job that I can take my 8 month old daughter along to. There has got to be a way to make money being self employed even in this economy. I wish I could find a way to use my knowledge of bargainhunting and frugalness to create income. The plan requires a little more thought.

Coupons and General Craziness

So far my get rich quick experiment has had absolutely no results. I guess I had better stick with what I know works...coupons. I am obsessive about coupons. I clip nearly all the coupons in the Sunday paper and spend a couple hours a week searching the internet for them. I keep them in an organizer to make shopping easier. Thanks to coupons, I rarely pay for items such as toothpaste, hand soap, air freshner, and pasta. The trick is to clip all the available coupons and then hold them until the items you have coupons for go on sale. Recently a $.50 coupon for Wacky Mac pasta was printable on Coupons.com. My local Kroger triples coupons up to $.50. The sale price of the pasta was $1.63 so with my coupon I paid $.13. I collect coupons from all of my neighbors who don't use them also. No sense letting them go to waste. Handsoap is another item that is easy to pick up for free or close to it. It frequently goes on sale for $1 and there are often $.35 coupons. Triple the coupon and the grocery store owes you money. To successfully use coupons, you also need to follow the tip in my last post....stock up on items when they are on sale. Try not to run out of the essentials before they go on sale again. I've been told by a fellow bargain enthusiast that a great way to track the sales and coupons of your local stores is through a website called www.grocerygame.com. Right now they are offering a 4 week trial for $1. This website keeps track of all the current coupons and tells you when the items go on sale at the grocery stores of your choice. Give it a try, it could be the best $1 you ever spent.

Normally I am very rational and think hard about the things I do before I do them. Today, however, I've gotten a wild streak. I got one of those crazy letters in the mail about making a fortune by paying the six people on a mailing list $1 and then adding yourself to the list and sending out a couple hundred more letters. I decided to experiment with it and see what happens. I don't by any means expect to get rich from it, but seeing how it spreads might be fun. I would love to hear any feedback on the idea, it seems kind of like a scam to me, but I'll try it anyway. If you've done this yourself, please let me know how it turned out for you. So far this morning I've posted it on five or six message boards.

A Place to Start

My life has changed drastically in the past two years. I have had to learn to live frugally and more thoughtfully. I would like to pass on a few of the lessons I've learned so that maybe someone else can skip a few of the mistakes I had to make along the way.
My favorite money saving projects are coupon clipping and grocery bargain hunting. There are tons of easy ways to save money at the grocery store and most are pretty simple to do. The first step is to stock up. Keep a well stocked pantry and freezer so that you are not forced to purchase items on the spur of the moment when they are at full price. Nearly every item in the grocery store goes on sale at some time. Use this fact to your advantage and buy a few extra items when they are on sale. Keep an eye out for closeout items, discounted foods, and mismarked products. Stores frequently mismark hand priced items such as meats and bakery items. Everyone makes mistakes and someone is going to profit from it, it might as well be you. Many stores mark meat down when it nears its sell-by date and if you're freezing it anyway, the short dates will not be an issue. On average I pay less than $1.25 per pound for all the meat I buy including steaks, chicken, and pork.

Next post.....coupons!!

A New Plan

The economy of our country is failing....badly. The government promotes bailouts for big companies, but what about us as individuals and as families? Who is going to bail us out? I heard somewhere that if the government had split up the bank bailout money and dispersed it evenly among all the legal adults in the US, the amount given to each person would be something like $250,000. I'll have to research the actual statement, but think what you could do with that kind of money. Each person would be an integral part of stimulating the economy.
Today I began to think about the fact that my family is sinking deeper into debt by the second. We are trying to wait for the economy to pick up, but I'm not sure we can hang on long enough. Every week we juggle the bills and decide which ones are the most important and which can be skipped for another week. There's just not enough money to go around and not a lot of hope on the horizon, so what is the next step? We have been cutting back steadily over the past months...eating out less, doing fewer costly fun things, and definitely curbing our shopping. Surprisingly enough, we seem to be enjoying each other's company more, getting along better, and paying more attention to each other's lives. Things like coupon clipping and getting a good deal on purchases have become a game we all play against each other. Emotionally we're thriving. Financially, it's a little different story. I don't think that we can survive this economy without some help.
As dire as things seem right now, I should be terrified of what is going to happen to my family. But I know that millions of people are in the same situation. I think we are all feeling the desperation together. So the next puzzle to solve is how to find the answers together. I truly believe the key to this is "together". If people really make an effort to help one another I think this country can save itself. People are going to have to start to overlook their differences and try to think differently. I received an email from a friend that said, "To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did." I do not know who to attribute the line to, but they are words to live by especially in the world we face. It's going to take a lot of work, but the world has to start somewhere.