I know I’ve mentioned it a few times before, but I have decided to get back into the couponing game. My main goal for May was to start my stockpile, and stock up on Summer staples for the kids. I think I did pretty good, and for the few weeks that I was at it, I was surprised by my savings. I stuck to the local stores, but in June I’m taking my coupon binder on the road, and hopefully I’ll come home with even better savings.

I started off at Walgreens, one of my favorite places to shop locally. They are very coupon friendly, and don’t frown when I hand over a big pile of coupons. I came home with a fantastic freebie, a full sized bottle of lotion was free with a coupon. I also got one of the lip-glosses for $.99, thanks to a bogo 50% off, and I used coupons on both too. Once I did the math I saved 43% with coupons and earned $4.00 in register rewards too.

Then it was off to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart seems to be hit and miss when it comes to coupons, but this time I was pretty happy when we got to the check-out. I got the tank top for free thanks to a $5.00 coupon. I also saved 48% on this shopping trip thanks to coupons.

Wood’s had an amazing soda sale going on, and I shopped it twice. We are stocked up for the Summer now. This was also my first time really using my coupons for a big shopping trip at Woods. I got a cool freebie too, I got a free sauce pan ($15.00) for signing up for their store’s membership rewards card ( to use to save on fuel). I also saved 26% on this trip, and started growing my stockpile.

Back to Walgreens one more time for the cereal sale. I was hoping to use my $4.00 in register rewards plus a $1.00 coupon to make this transaction $.97, but it didn’t work. I saved the $4.00 register rewards for the diaper sale for later in the week. I can’t complain about a cereal sale though, my kiddos go through a crazy amount of cereal.

I also visited Gene’s Heartland Foods to once again shop a cereal sale. I also spotted a good deal on chips while we were there. I saved 15% on this shopping trip, and  one of the boxes of cereal had $5.00 worth of coupons included. Pretty good deal, and once again all of the purchases went to the stockpile.

My best deal for the month was getting the lip gloss for $.99, I was pretty happy about that one.

I also came up with some cool freebies. I got 2 free tank tops, a free sauce pan, and a free bottle of lotion. Not too bad.

I tracked all of my shopping trips for two weeks, and ended up saving 23% total. It was well worth the time and extra clipping too. I’m going to make this my Summer project and see just how much I can save at the stores.