Why I Coupon

My husband is a man who loves to save money. He grew up in a home with seven kids and his mom stayed home as well. If he wanted a Nintendo he had to buy it with his own money which he earned by selling items, weeding gardens, mowing lawns, delivering papers, etc. Whatever he had to do to buy what he wanted he did. They never had brand name foods in his home growing up and for the most part neither did I. My husband wants to be financially secure and that is his driving force in life. I am very fortunate to have a husband like this because he has taught me how to budget, invest and save in ways that no one else has taught me. However, because he is "obsessed" (for lack of a better word) with money when we were spending way too much money on what he calls "doodads" (a Robert Kiyosaki term that refers to anything that doesn't put money back in your pocket) we started to argue. It got so bad that we went months without even talking about money because the minute he started to talk I tuned him out. I tuned him out because I felt like I was doing everything I could do and no matter what it wasn't good enough. I shopped at Wal-mart, never bought new clothes, only bought generics and rarely bought any meat except for chicken and hamburger. Finally I had enough. I suggested that we out the credit cards away (we pay them off every month but were using them like crazy) and we used cash for everything. Every week we would take out a set amount of money and that was what we had for the week. If we used all of our money on clothes for the kids we ate out of our pantry for the week even if that meant we had Top Ramen every day. The weeks we had to buy groceries I was spending all of the money we had alotted for the week and had nothing left for anything fun. Then back in February my good friend invited me to her coupon class and that changed my life!

I wasn't going to attend the class because I was nine months pregnant - I had my son 7 days later, but she was so excited and was saving TONS of money so I thought what the heck, I'll check this out. I signed up for four papers and thought we'll see how this works. For the first month I set the inserts aside and kind of glanced at the website but never did much else. Then one day I thought what the heck let's see how this works. I made up my shopping list and clipped my coupons and just hoped I did my math right because I only had about $96.00 left for the week. We went to Albertsons and bought everything on the list for about $83.00 and I saved about $83.00 I was then convinced! Since I have been using the coupons the "RIGHT" way my husband and I no longer fight about money. He comes with me every week, or stays home and entertains the kids and he is just as excited about my savings as I am. He even went shopping for me one day! We now have money to go on dates, play golf, buy new pots and pans and still get the groceries we need each week! Using coupons and the Grocery Smarts website has brought us a little closer to being more financially secure.