On Saving Money And Such....

I do realize that all of my posts are about Wyatt. With eyelashes like these, how can I resist?

Hehe (had to throw a picture of him in here)

Anyways, as you all know Mr. is getting out of the military on June 2nd. I guess you could say he already is out and has been since March 18th. He has been using his "terminal leave" a.k.a. Not working but still getting paid his full paychecks, medical coverage for all of us, base access, Ect. This is definitely a once in a lifetime experience. The 3 of us are together all day, everyday with no financial worries. We are having an amazing time and soaking it all in.

However, it is quickly coming to an end. We are down to only 2 more paychecks. Mr. starts his flight program in August and we will be receiving some of the benefits that are still offered to us through the military, but the reality is that our income is decreasing drastically (and has been for several months now). We went from a 3 job household (for just the 2 of us) to 2 jobs (I quit one of my jobs during my 3rd trimester) and then to 1 job after I had Wyatt. And very soon, neither of us will technically have a "job."

We feel very strongly that it is important that I stay home with Wyatt. (and if you're familiar with daycare prices, you know sometimes it isn't even reasonable to work outside the home just for all that money to get paid to the daycare).

Since I am not working outside the home, I feel that something I can do to help us is SAVE money! I've gotten back into couponing and just wanted to share a little bit about ways I've been saving.

Walgreens is an awesome place to save! The idea behind (extreme) couponing is to match current sales with coupons to maximize your savings. For example, this week at Walgreens, they have all Covergirl cosmetics B1G1 50% off. And there is coupon out right now that is $2.50 off 2 Covergirl products. I shopped Walgreens deals today and ended up spending $11.67 and my SAVINGS totaled $12.22. So I saved more than I spent. (Everything I bought was on sale AND I had a coupon for it. I got 2 things of Lysol toilet bowl cleaner, Colgate toothpaste, Colgate toothbrush, Covergirl mascara, and Covergirl eyeshadow)

I get my coupons mostly from the Sunday newspaper. But there are also several websites online that you can print coupons from. The main one being http://www.coupons.com/. And then I also recently discovered the magazine All You. This month's issue has $85 worth in coupons! And it also has tons of recipes for meals on a budget, freebies and giveaways, ect.

I know I mentioned a few posts ago that I started meal planning again and grocery shopping only to the list. This helps tremendously in cutting down on the grocery bill. Last week we only spent $30 for groceries. (This is not the norm, we just happened to have several things in the panrty and freezer that could be made into meals and planned the week's meals based off what we already had.) But I will be working hard to get our grocery bill as low as I can.

I have tons more to share on this topic but for the sake of putting an end to this post, it'll have to wait until next time! (including sharing about our debt... or lack there-of :) )
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