A few years ago, due to something I read and my own feelings, I decided to do a month of summer homeschooling which I blogged about here and here. It went well and I learned a lot. The main thing was the girls all felt they were better prepared for the start of school than they had been in years past. It made me rethink the year school plan. I only did the one summer of homeschooling, but each summer I try to come up with something that keeps their minds working. This summer I gave Darcy the assignment of working with coupons. I told her that it was her job to cut out the coupons and accompanying me to the grocery. For every dollar she saved me I would give her that amount at the end of summer. To her credit she said she didn't think that was saving money in the end, but she would take the deal.
She started out with the Sunday paper inserts. Madison and I came up with our weekly meals and made a grocery list. Darcy went over the grocery list and circled the items she had coupons for and then we went shopping. At the end of the trip she saved $14.70. I was shocked. My mother has always used coupons and is always on me to use them myself, but although I cut them out some weeks I inevitably forget them and they expire. Now I was experiencing coupon savings via my daughter.
Not long after our first week of shopping I was thumbing through the cable channels and landed on TLC's Extreme Couponing. Darcy, Madison, and I watched several episodes with our mouths dropped open. Now seriously these people are very extreme and if you ask me most of them belong on A&E's Hoarders, but it got us all pumped to keep on cutting.
Darcy has a two coupon caddies, one for the grocery and one for stores like Target and Walmart. She spends about an hour online downloading and cutting coupons that she finds on various sites. If Madison and I talk about a product we want to add to the grocery list she will veto it if she doesn't have a coupon for it. I recently read a an article about extreme couponing that made some sense and might just help me plan my weekly menu, a chore I despise. The author said that a good couponer plans her meals around what is on sale so when this week's grocery ad appeared in my paper I went through it circling everything I was likely to buy, and now Madison and I will try to plan our meals around this sale. If Darcy has extra coupons on top of that, then we will be that much richer as well. I will still purchase those things I crave, against Darcy's wishes, because life is too short to deny oneself, but I will not go crazy as I have in the past.
Keep track of Darcy's savings to right of my blog. Maybe if she gets good at it (without becoming a hoarder because my house is not designed for that) she will start her own blog!
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