Savings Machine

Surprisingly, groceries in our little town are super expensive. Four dollars for a gallon of milk says it all. Our first month here, our grocery bill was double what it was in Utah. Crazy! So, in an effort to save money, I've been a coupon clipping, savings-blog-following machine. I even have a binder, separated into more than 30 sections where I keep track of all my coupons. Initially, I was a little overwhelmed but excited. As a matter of fact, Andy thought my excitement a little weird. Until this happened:

All of this totaled more than $60. What did I pay? NOTHING! This was all FREE!

I've had similar shopping trips since then, but I felt most successful after this week when I got our family more than $750 worth of food groceries for about $200. In one shopping trip alone I got $98 worth of groceries (including 12 boxes of General Mills Cereal and eight boxes of Nature Valley granola bars, among other things) for $23. We've got our meals set for the next six weeks or so. I will have to go back to the store to get milk and fruit (I've been making our bread), but during my shopping trips I earned $15 off my next purchase so I'll be able to use that for those things. I would like to whittle our shopping budget down even more over the next few months, but this is a good start, especially considering grocery prices here. For now though, we've got enough cereal, granola bars, yogurt, frozen vegetables and cheese to get us through the next year (or so it seems).