Prepping for a New Year

I just tallied up my 2010 spending and was thrilled with my savings for the 2nd year in a row. Now I'm getting ready to move into 2011 and I need to get organized for the year ahead.

The first Sunday of the year always has tons of coupons. They are new printables, and 4 or 5 inserts in the newspaper. In order to handle that many coupons and get off to a fresh start, I have to have an system that is cleaned out and ready to go. I use a binder to organize my coupons.

Most coupons tend to expire at the end of a month but a ton of them expire on the last day of the year. After I've made my last shopping trip of the year, I go through my binder and pull out all my expired coupons. Then, I prepare them for shipment to an overseas military base.

Now I have a clean slate and I'm ready to clip, print and load in my new coupons. Bring on the savings in 2011!

If you are new to couponing, please start with my Frugal 101 series for more tips and tricks!

2010 Savings

I finished up my last shopping trip of 2010 and sat down to do the math. I kept track of my totals with this spreadsheet from Couponing 101.

In the end, my totals looked like this.

Total Spent: $2587

Total Saved: $6582

Percentage: 71%

Weekly Average: $49.74

My budget last year was $60 per week. I set a goal to reduce my weekly spending to $50 and I did it!!! If you include that extra $10 per week in my savings then it is safe to say that I saved my family over $7000 this year. Whoo Hoo!! I still say that couponing is the best part-time job I've ever had. :)

A further breakdown shows how much I saved at each store:

Publix: $2035

Walgreens: $1628

Kroger: $1569

CVS: $685

I tracked these totals with my own spreadsheet. I also had savings from Food Lion not reported. Since my store closed half-way through the year the number would have been really skewed in comparison.

Overall, I am again thrilled with my totals and especially my savings! I love looking back at the end of a year and tracking my spending trends. I was really surprised to see that I had more savings at Walgreens than Kroger. I, however, was not surprised to see Publix at the top. :)

How did you do this year?

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from me to you!

EVERYONE Wins!

Today Cellfire is back with another promotion where you can win a $-off coupon. In this promo, EVERYONE will win a coupon for either $0.50, $1.00, $2.00 or even $5.00!!

Login to your account today (Dec 16th) between Noon-4 pm CST to see which coupon you have won. While there, you can also clip some of their newest E-coupons that were loaded this week.

Stop back by and let us know which coupon you received. *Fingers crossed for the big FIVE!*