Sunday, October 14, 2007

CouponMom: A great resource for busy people (like me)

Many of you who have been reading know that I enjoy coupon shopping, and like to shop at at least one grocery store and two drug stores every month. This summer, I was trading coupons, participating in a coupon train, clipping, sorting, filing, store hopping, and rebating like a champ.

Then school started again.

I've been working like a madwoman for the past eight weeks or so, and one of the things that started to fall by the wayside was the couponing. It really just wasn't a priority for me.

Coupon mom has helped me get back on track. Every week, she matches store savings to all the unexpired insert coupons she has on file. I just go to her website, click my store, and it generates a list. I like to sort the list by percent saved, so I can be sure to catch the best deals, but I usually read to the bottom of the list. With a few clicks, I can create a printable list of just the items I want. I then take that list to my file of unclipped inserts, where it tells me in exactly which dated inserts I can find the coupon I need. This saves me hours a week, and I've gotten my grocery budget back down to $40 a week for two of us, even with some luxury items thrown in. Best of all, this is a 100% free service.

$40 a week is not as good as I was doing this summer when I was doing this all out, but who cares? It's good enough and it's helping my family.