March Savings

I did ok last month on my savings quest. I went over my $225 by a couple hundred dollars. This may sound not so good but in reality, I did so much better than I do any other month. I normally spend at least twice that much! But the main thing I did was to use what we already had as often as I could.

This was also my first month using coupons every chance I could. I quickly out grew my accordion pocket coupon organizer and tried to go with two index card boxes to file my coupons but I out grew that before I even finished. I am now into a shoe box.

I thought I knew The Grocery Game without having read the "rules" but now that I have read the rules, I have to say oops. Even though I saved a ton of money in March, I am down to a point of having to restock. I should be stockpiling, using one store (I was willing to drive to all the stores in my neighborhood) and basing my weekly meal plan on what I have not what I buy. I bought Terri Gault's book Shop Smart Save More. It is full of tips of the trade for shopping and I think next month (May) I will be well versed in "the game" and do better. But for this month, I will continue to use my coupons and working on playing the game.

As a side note, with all the prescriptions I transferred to CVS to get a $25 gift card with each transferr, Walgreens sent us a "check" to get $25 if we transferred a prescription back. Here comes another transferr!!