Saving money!

I have to post on this again. Now that I'm starting to get good at using coupons, I am wondering why I didn't start this before!!! There was a time when we were slightly worse off financially, and I could have saved an abundant amount of money by doing what I'm doing now.

Today I went to CVS.. I didn't pay a penny for hundreds of dollars of groceries like you see on the Extreme Couponing show, but I did only spend about 50 percent of what I would have without a little bit of planning. Let me show you exactly what I did today to save money so that hopefully you can do the same. Like I said, I'm haven't mastered shopping for free. (I understand the concept completely, but I am still working on building my coupon collection, and I don't have the space in the apartment I am currently living in to do it. But here is today's shopping trip for us (keep in mind, that I already did my weekly grocery shopping trip the other day, and today I only needed some odds and ends, and I added in some things that I knew I could get good deals on.

This stuff all rung up to an initial total of $45.25. With coupons and my CVS customer reward card, I only spent $22.26, saving $22.99. That's right, over 50 percent. I also accumulated $3 in Extrabucks by buying things that gave them. This is awesome to pay attention to, and I'll explain how further into this. Here's how the sale went.

They had a sale on the dawn dish soaps for .99 each. I had two coupons for any size dawn dish soap. One was $1 off one, and the other was .20 off one. So, 1.98 initially turned into .39 each, or only .78.

CVS had a sale on General Mills cereal at three for $6. 00 I also had a $1.00 off three, making them three for $5.00, or 1.67 each.

The three twix bars, I had a coupon for one free twix bar, and CVS was doing a sale for buy two get one free, so I paid the price for one, and got two free. The thing to remember in situations like these, is to give your customer rewards card before you hand over your coupons, or this kind of sale might not work.

The toothpaste was on sale for $3.99, I had a $1.50 off coupon. This made the out of pocket cost of the toothpaste $2.49. This product also gives you $1.50 in Extra bucks, so it's like paying .99.

The two boxes of ziplock bags were on sale for two for $5.00, I had a $1.00 off two, making it two for $4.00 out of pocket, but there was also a .50 Extra bucks reward for each one, making them $1.50 each.

The finish dishwasher detergent was on sale for $2.49, and there was a .50 Extra Bucks reward on that also.

The two sodas, I bought at full price simply because I wanted them.

There is an in depth description of how I managed to pay half of my cost at CVS today. The Extra bucks that I kept writing about are awesome. CVS is basically giving you money back on certain items that can be used again in the store. This is an another awesome way to save money.