Saved $51.51 on groceries!!!

I've gotten into couponing quite a bit, and finding the best deals and stocking up when things are on sale. Saves money in the long run. Our budget for groceries, toiletries, cleaning supplies, etc. is $200 a month. I thought it would be hard to plan meals on that, but since moving to using cash it's been easy.

Jason and I typically do our grocery shopping one day, and we shop for two weeks. If things are a really good deal or we are out in the area we do shop more than that. But typically it's once every two weeks. Tonight we ran out to eat and I had printed some Target coupons that I wanted to match up with the sales they have going on. Now, this isn't our typical shopping trip, we have food and meals planned out through the end of the month and I still had $60 left over. I figured I could stock up on some unnecessary items.

We bought the following:
6 bags of Cheetos (9 oz size and up)
12 bags of 14 oz M&M's
5 boxes Stove-Top Dressing
1 container Sour Cream (16 oz)

The normal retail value on the groceries is $60.36
With the sales going on the total was $30.10
After coupons we paid $8.85!!!

THAT IS A SAVINGS OF ABOUT 85%!!!!

Jason is thrilled, we is stocked up on Cheetos and M&M's. Now we normally only buy these items when they are on sale anyway, but with the coupons, it was an awesome deal!!

The Cheetos were 50 cents a bag. The M&M's were 28 cents a bag. The Dressing was 29 cents a box. And the Sour Cream was $1.04.

While we were there, we picked up a printer for me for Christmas. I need a printer hooked up to my laptop, and I also looked at the ink. Target has a special going on if you buy 2 single packs of ink you earn a $10 gift card. For the ink it was actually a pretty good deal since the ones for my new printer were marked down anyway. The $10 gift card is now going back into the Christmas money to buy more gifts.