Welcome to the Menifee Thrifty Mom's Club

Hi Ladies!! Emily beat me to making the first post on our blog. After talking to her on Tuesday night I think she should have been put in charge. She taught me a few things on the blog and showed me several sites for saving!!

I gave the login information for this blog to the gals who were at the meeting on Tuesday night. Scratch that. Emily taught me a better way. She taught me a way that will allow several people to be working on the group blog at the same time. I was worried that if one person was logged in at their house to the group blog and another person tried to log on they might not be able to. So I will send in invite to your email to be a contributor on this blog. If you already have a blog through blogspot when you sign up to be a contributor our group blog will show up on your dashboard under your personal blog. If you don't have a blog all you have to do is sign up to be a contributor to our blog through the invite I send you. You don't have to have a blog of your own to be a contributor. If all of this blogging stuff stresses you out :) then please feel free to just send an email to the menifeethriftymomsclub@yahoo.com and I will forward it to the group. If I don't send your email out I might not be receiving it. I have tried to forward emails from my verizon address to the yahoo one and it is not receiving it. If you think I might not be receiving your emails then please email me at trentamber23@verizon.net. I have a feeling that it is going to take some time to get all the kinks out and get everyone on the same page, but we will get there.

On Tuesday night at our first meeting we barely scratched the surface on learning where to get coupons and how to use them. I played a few podcasts which I will post here for those of you who were not able to make it. These types of sites are really going to be beneficial in you learning how to get your best deals. Sharing sites and deals is really going to be the best way for us to save $$.

One thing I forgot to talk about was where to put your $$ for your monthly budget. If you have ever listened to Dave Ramsey (TV financial personality) he talks about the envelope system. He takes his money out in cash monthly and puts it in envelopes with labels on them. Groceries, clothes, entertainment, etc. We used to do this before we had ever heard of him and it made me nervous having that cash around the house. Shortly after we stopped our home was robbed. Luckily we didn't have our monthly money in cash at home. After that I quit doing the envelope system. What I do now is similar though. I was having a difficult time knowing what I had left for gas and groceries because that money was mixed in with our other monthly funds. I went down to our bank and opened a seperate account with a seperate debit card and every month I transfer our funds for groceries and gas to that account. This way I know how much I have and when it is gone it is gone. Just an idea to help you save money because you will not overspend on your grocery bill if you know your budgeted money is gone for the month.

The most important thing we talked about was getting the Sunday paper. I am not sure how you gals want to get yours, it is up to you. You can either go to the newsstand on Sunday mornings and drop your quarters in or you can have the LA times weekends only edition delivered to you. I would strongly suggest getting it at the newsstand your first few weeks to see if couponing is for you. You don't want to spend the money for a yearly subscription only to learn 4 weeks down the road that this really isn't fun for you and then feel like you have wasted your money. If you already subscribe to the Press Enterprise Tansy shared that if you don't want to receive it all week you can call and ask to get weekends only for a discount and if they won't do it tell them you are going to cancel and they probably will do it for you. The best savings are by getting the weekly inserts from the Sunday paper. If you don't get a paper you will most likely not benefit very much from this group. There are several places online to print coupons, but most times to get the best deals you will need coupons from the Red Plum, Smart Source and P & G saver.

Melissa Pearson aka The Savings Queen is in my friends ward in Texas. She is very good at saving and one month after starting their savings club a gal in their ward saved $300 on her monthly grocery bill.

http://www.thewinonline.com/shows/thesavingsqueenshow.html

On Tuesday night we listened to "Coupon Resources" and "You want to save big with coupons." I would highly recommend listening to all of her podcasts. They all can be very beneficial.

Some things to remember when starting to coupon are to take baby steps. You are most likely not going to save hundreds of dollars your first time out. The first month that I started just shopping ads and buying mainly the items we use when they are on sale I ended up spending a little more than normal when stocking up. (The idea is to only buy things on sale and stock up on them until they are on sale again.) The second month that I only shopped sales I saved $200 on my monthly grocery bill. There are women out there who are savings hundreds a month and thousands a year by ONLY buying things on sale. I am not to that point and don't know if I ever will be. It just depends on how much time you have to spend on getting organized. I can guarantee you though if you have just 30-45 minutes a week to clip coupons from the Sunday paper and match them up to store ad sales, you WILL save something. When I started I would save $10-$20 on my monthly Wal-Mart run. In learning to shop the drugstore ads (Walgreen) I don't even have to buy my hygiene products at Wal-Mart anymore because I get them anywhere from $1-Free at Walgreens now. I think it's my new favorite spot! I am definitely not an expert like these ladies online so we will learn together.

Don't get frustrated if the first few times you use coupons you don't do it right or you don't get the maximum savings. It is a learning process. Just like anything new, you WILL get better with practice. I have been couponing for 3 years and have just recently figured out how people get things for free. You will get there. It definitely takes organization and lots of PATIENCE.

Take some time to search through the blogs I have listed to the right side of our blog. There are some definite SUPER SAVERS here and great resources. A lot of times the deals on these blogs are the same so pick your favorite 2-3 to check daily. We cannot take advantage of EVERY deal out there so I suggest choosing 1-2 stores weekly and hit their sales. My two are Albertsons and Walgreens, yours will most likely be different. For all you Ralph's shoppers they double coupons. This means that if your coupon is for 50 cents, it is worth $1 when you use it there.

This is about all I have time for today, but MUCH MORE to come!! Amber