Monthly Savings

This year I really want to track my spending/coupon savings more accurately. For the month of January I collected all of my receipts (Publix, Target, CVS, Walgreens) so I could track how much I'm getting, paying, and saving with my coupons. I started couponing last summer and it took me a couple of months to get the hang of it. I now feel very comfortable with the coupon policies of each store and I now never shop without coupons.

However, towards the end of last year- especially around the holidays- I did get the sense that I was spending more than I should have because I had coupons. This is what Nick calls the "negative coupons". I broke one of the cardinal rules, don't buy something you don't need just because you have a coupon for it (e.g. can you say candles???). If I don't need it then it's better to let the coupon go to waste than to spend money however small the amount may be (even $.50 items start adding up). So I hope to stick to the free items and stuff that I really will need.

Anyhow, I now have a (yet another) spreadsheet that I hope will help me stay on track and not spend unnecessarily. I am afraid to report that I didn't do as well as I had hoped for this month. I spent about $100 more than I expected thanks to the Target after-Christmas toy clearance. So if I take the stuff that I bought Gavin out of the equation I did well but that's not the way it works. I did manage to save 48.94% of the total month purchases (includes toys, cleaning products, groceries, baby food, formula, personal hygiene stuff, newspapers). My mental goal is to save at least 50% so I wasn't too off the mark but I know I can do better. On a positive note, I did buy Gavin's birthday gifts at great prices and because I stocked up on lunch stuff we didn't spend nearly as much as we regularly do on eating out this month so it balances out at the end.

I post this so that again I feel accountable to do as I intend to do. If I have to "report" how I'm doing then I am much more likely to do the right thing and ask "do I really need this?" before I purchase it. I hope that next month we'll be much better since I do have $15 in Target gift cards (from their buy "x" get $5 gift card offers) and $24 in CVS Extra Care Bucks so that should subsidize quite a bit in February. Wish me luck! :)