Extremely

Couple facts about me before I get all crazy on you.

1. I've been buying newspapers and trying to save money using coupons since probably January of 2008.
2. I've been largely unsuccessful at saving money by using coupons. Though, for your information, I am much better at saving money in general than I was in 2009.
3. I started following Freebies2Deals in January when I saw the lady who writes the blog on one of my daytime television favorites.
4. I've been much better at using coupons at Target (who knew Target had their own coupons?!) with manufacture coupons trying to save $$ since I found out you could use multiples like that.
5. The TV show Extreme Couponing has sort of taken over my life (and Josh's) and we've been mildly obsessed with trying to get deals like they do on that show, though it's pretty much like a once in a year/stroke of luck to get purchases of $1,200 down to less than $20.00.
6. I live in New York City
7. Brooklyn is awesome because nobody here coupons, so there are no crazy Utah County rules and there are grocery stores here that simply double coupons because THEY DO!
8. Also, on Thursdays, inserts with coupons go out to all the apartments and houses around here and probably 20% of people pick them up.

Alright, so based on these facts, I decided to start couponing. It's brilliant because there is a grocery store that doubles coupons approximately 2 miles away (which approximates to about 20 mi in Utah but whatever) and they double any coupons less than $1.00. That means, my $0.50 coupons double to $1.00, my $0.75 to $1.50 and my $0.99 to $1.98. It's madness! Madness I want to get into. So combine my awesome doubling grocery store with the dozens of inserts left on the street I have been collecting and using coupons like a lunatic. It's pretty great.

Now I know you're thinking I shouldn't be stealing people's inserts. Let the record show, I do wait 24 hours after they've been distributed before I gather them up, giving all men and women working crazy work shifts the opportunity to gather their insert. AND I am polite enough not to clear out a whole street. If I happen to find a pile of 5 or 6, I usually leave 1 or 2. Usually I end up with 8-13 sets of coupons to cut. It's cool.

So, here is my coupon crazy picture. Granted, these were purchased in multiple purchases at different stores and I got "rewards" (catalinas is their actual name) for future purchases that I added back in to what I spent to get these totals. But still, it's cool. So here we go.

Total retail price: 244.22 Price I paid: 30.53

Includes 1 bottle Excedrin Migraine, 3 Dove deodorants, 2 Dove face/body wash, 22 3-Musketeer candy bars, 12 bars of Hershey's chocolate, 14 boxes of cereal, 4 boxes of Fiber One brownies (we already opened the 4th, sorry), 1 jar French's Mustard, 2 bags Wacky Mac, 2 boxes Ronzoni pasta, 8 bottles Method cleaner, 2 travel sized Degree deodorant, 2 Suave deodorant, and 1 5-pack Zyrtec.

I saved 87% on these items. Pretty impressive, if I must say so. Ya'll know about my shopping addiction and now I have a way to channel that energy into a bit-healthier-but-definitely-much-safer-on-my-bank-account way of shopping. So I'm only mildly crazy. And, for all you naysayers saying I'm a hoarder etc etc I AM NOT YET. When I start buying 100 bottles of hot sauce and couscous because it's free (or like, 1 cent), you can call me out.