I started examining the use of coupons as a money saving strategy in February arguing whether coupon savings is worth it? However I decided in March to move forward with a 13 week process of examining my savings using coupons. Why 13 weeks? Because that’s how long I prepaid the delivery for my Sunday paper to get my coupons.

I started on 3/03/07 coupon shopping and my first try was disasterous, read about it here. Which I followed up a week later on 3/11/07 with another post about another disasterous coupon shopping experience where I spent more money because I had coupons! This caused my DH to chastisize me for spending more than I normally would have because of it, and trust me I felt bad already.

So anyway for the month of March we saved $75 using coupons for our purchases. However we spent $241.09 on groceries + $50.76 on toiletries. We also spent $324.65 on eating out. Which was all under budget. I usually budget $400 for groceries+toiletries and $400 for eating out.

Do I think my decreased spending from Feburary $454.56 for groceries was due to coupons? Not really, it was mainly due to the fact that I stockpiled a lot of meat in the freezer and 50 cases of soda. So my bill was higher than usual and I was able for the month of March to buy less meat and save a lot on my typical grocery bill.

Do I think couponing is worth it? Well most of the $75 of savings came in the form of toiletries like bodywash, shampoo, lotion, etc. And about $33 of it was from groceries. So about half and half. I saved a great percentage on toiletries, and a smaller percentage on groceries.

But I haven’t given up yet and am going to continue on this journey another 10 weeks. I guess I should post more often about what I’m saving. But for now I think I’m pretty happy with our monthly spending and our savings. Maybe it’ll become greater savings and smaller spending.