Pinching pennies

So far I have had no luck finding a second job. Even Starbucks hasn’t called me back. And to further complicate things, while my office will now be closed on Fridays I will still be required to follow through and be at events previously scheduled on Fridays - which means that I’m now not available every Friday to work a second job which makes it harder to find a second job with a super flexible schedule. Plus, it will take a couple of weeks to be interviewed and hired anywhere and my pay cut starts Monday, so I need to come up with another plan to start saving money now.

My first way to save money is to start using coupons more. After watching Extreme Couponing on TLC I am motivated to save some money while I shop for groceries. No, I don’t plan to stockpile tons and tons of groceries but I would like to take some of their tips and apply then to smaller orders. For example, use a coupon to buy things that are already on sale so you increase your savings. I tried that last week and ended up paying $0.97 for a bottle of body wash. I also know that King Soopers (Kroger) will double manufacturer coupons up to $1.00. I’m still trying to figure this all out, but I guess I will get the hang of it now since I have an extra day in my week to work on it.

The second thing I am going to do is challenge myself to spend no more than $5 on dinners for Dave and me. Instead of planning my meals for the week then buying ingredients, I am going to plan my meals around what is on sale, what I have coupons for, what I can buy in bulk and what is just plain cheap.  I think we’ll end up having bulk items multiple times in a week and dressing them up in different ways so it looks new. For example, having hot dogs one night, hot dogs with mac & cheese another night then maybe hot dogs in chili another night.

So that’s what I’ve come up with for now. What do you do to save money? Do you coupon? If so, how do you do it, where do you get coupons and what are your favorite tips & tricks? Please share any insight you have in the comments. I’m sure that many of us would love to save some extra money, even if we’re not going through pay cuts so share away! I’m open to any new ideas and I will try the ones that sound doable then share the results on the blog. Let’s all save some money!