Coupon Mania!!

So with our current living situation and Jerry being in graduate school I have had to really tighten things up at home. One of the ways I have been doing this is with coupons. I have always cut and used coupons but recently someone at work showed me how to really use coupons and get stuff for free or almost free. Last month was my first really successful month and I was quite proud of many of my purchases. 14oz boxes of cheerios for $1 a box. Natures Valley granola bars for 0.50 cents a box. Family sized bottles of Garnier fructis shampoo for less than $2.00 a bottle. I have found that places like CVS and Walgreen's, places I would have never dared enter before, have some of the greatest deals. The look on the cashiers face at Walgreen's last week when I paid 34 dollars on a 90 dollar tab was priceless. Today I bought 4 3-packs of Gillette razors, 4 boxes of sleepy time tea, and two 90 count bags of satin flossers at Walgreen's for $15.48. Less than the original price of the tea alone. The razors came to about one dollar a box. Crazy but true. The secret is not being a brand snob and cutting lots of coupons. Multiple papers if you can and being super organized. Then at the beginning of each week you go through the ads and make your lists and pull your coupons. Rite aid has many things free this week in their sales paper. If you add the coupon, they are actually paying you to take the product off the shelf. This weeks freebies include kotex and oral B toothbrushes among others. A lot of times you can trade coupons or print extras off the Internet. CVS and Walgreen's frequently have Crest and Colgate toothpaste on sale for 99 cents. With the one dollar off Sunday paper coupons its free, so stock up. It they are out, get a rain check. BJ's is another jack pot. Not only are their prices better than Sam's on most items, they have a deli and they take coupons. They also send out their own coupon books monthly and will allow you to use double and triple coupons. Today I had a rebate on campbell soup 6-packs. Buy 5 cases get 10 dollars off from BJs flier. The store had 2.50 off coupons at the register plus I had all of the Sunday paper coupons. I ended up getting 30 cans of campbells soups for 11.45 (38 cents a can)!! My other jackpot is the Price Chopper. It isn't the most organized store but the sales are great and they give 10 cents off gas for every 50 dollars spent. The cents off accrues so today Jerry and I were able to buy up to 20 gallons of gas at sunoco for 59 cents a gallon. We had accrued 2 dollars off with groceries. It takes time at first but its easy and it saves a ton of money. And given the current economic crisis we are currently in I am sure we could all use a little extra money.