There’s no shame in saving!
Do you coupon? I do. It's amazing how those little pieces of paper mount up and fill a shoe box. Just as amazing is how much I've saved through the years and on what types of items.
Before marriage, I did the shopping for my parents, my sister and myself. I learned early on in life how to stretch a buck. When I married my husband-I got custody of the shoe box.
My new partner scoffed, "What could we possibly save? A dime here, a quarter there? What good will that do?" Back then no supermarket doubled their coupons.
So I made him come with me on the next week's trip. I handed over my treasure trove to the cashier. I could feel my husband cringing in embarrassment about the pride I took in the thickness of the stack.
Our bill for the two of us totaled $65. Then off came the coupons. I had whittled down the amount to $57. Not a fortune, but I pointed out that the $8 was better in our pocket than the market's! My darling realized that if I averaged even $5 a week that it covered almost a month of groceries at the end of the year.
We started to make a game of it. On our calendar, I recorded my coupon savings. I still do that today. With quite a bit more success I assure you! Our first year of marriage, I wound up with a savings of $350. At the end of 2008-my total was $2,958.24.
Not so bad for some scraps of paper and a few minutes of my time. Very soon after that first trip, my once red-faced new groom now started coming home very proud of the coupons he found and brought home for me to use.
Then came the coupons to use in restaurants, haircuts, dry-cleaners, new lenses for our glasses, make up, food for the animals, discounts at the vets, freebies for our kids-the list kept growing on what we could use our clippings on and how much we could save.
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