My new food challenge is to actually eat the food I buy before I buy more! I have been doing a great job stocking up and paying next to nothing for it but my pantry is about to burst. I have some pretty crazy things in there like 12 bottles of mustard and 6 bottles of hot sauce. They were all free after coupons. Oh and pickles, man do I have pickles. Good thing I really like pickles. lol Oh yeah, should I mention my 60 cans of beans? I paid about 5 cents each for them. I guess that’s a lot better than my challenge last week of fixing a hole in the ceiling of a closet caused by a leaking roof and cleaning out all of the stuff that was destroyed. Ugh. Not a fun week.

I started using grocery coupons a couple of months ago when I happened to find one for something I was going to buy that day anyway. It turned out to be on sale and the store tripled the coupon. Ever since then I have been hooked. For the life of me I can’t remember what I bought that day though. lol

Anyway, where I live there are 6 grocery stores and 2 super Wal-Mart’s all within 10 miles. There prices are ok. Not super cheap but not bad. Where they get competitive is with coupons. At least 2 of them do.

I’m not sure if Wal-Mart even takes coupons. I’ve had too many bad experiences so I don’t even shop there anymore. One of the other grocery stores is a Wegmans. Their prices are ok but I’m too tempted by their specialty cheeses so I had to stop shopping there. Mmm specialty cheeses.

Of the 5 remaining stores 3 are of one chain (Weis) and the other 2 are a different chain (Giant). Those two directly compete with each other even though they say they don’t. Meaning they don’t compare prices to each other but they both compare their prices to Wegmans. Kind of silly really.

Weis and Giant both double coupons everyday up to $1. So if the coupon is for $1 they will give you $2 off and every couple of months they run triple coupon promotions where you can triple up to 6 coupons with a $15 purchase.

Grocery shopping has become a game instead of a chore. I actually love it now. Ok well not love but it can be fun standing there watching my bill drop with every coupon scanned. We have saved so much money and I’ve gotten so many people into coupons by just telling them about my savings. On my best trip ever I got about $50 in groceries and paid $1.17 but I usually save between 50% and 80%!

My name is Jamie. I am 29 (for the first time, seriously lol) and live in the middle of nowhere. Ok actually the middle of Pennsylvania but that’s the same thing as nowhere.

After some rough patches and frivolous spending I managed to get myself over 10,000 in debt on my credit cards. I have that down to about 3,000 now, give or take a hundred or two. I’m also working on a massive student loan for a bachelors and masters degree that I am not using. D’oh! But that will change once I get to a city that actually has a real economy (hopefully).

I have a LONG way to go but I feel I’m making better progress getting my financial life in order.