Savings Angel

I mentioned in my meal planning post not long ago that I was trying out SavingsAngel.com for a two week trial just to see what happens.  I went shopping today, 01/21/11, and this is my SavingsAngel proof:

See all that stuff - the regular price on all of that would have been $53.82.  That's a lot of dough!  But, what did I pay?  Are you sitting down?  I paid . . . . . . $18.00.  Seriously.  Between sales, matching coupons with the help of SavingsAngel and being a MPerks member at Meijer - I only paid $18.00 for all of that stuff!  And yes, it is stuff we use.  To make it even more real, I had to buy juice this week - we were out; I had to buy butter tubs this week - we were out; I needed corn for a meal and we had no chips in the house.  The cleaning stuff - I'm so excited!  I haven't bought cleaning stuff in a long time as I was using up things I had on hand and, boy, I've missed that Pine-Sol smell.  See the two Tilex bottles - I ended up getting both of them for $1.00 - normally $8.22.  I'm super, duper excited!  On top of that, my grocery budget right now is $100.00.  Today, I spent $89.40 and yes, that includes that $18.00.  I'm in shock, trust me.  Now, even my husband is a skeptic of this whole program so I know one week won't prove that this is worth the monthly fee BUT, I'm pretty sure it will be.  I only paid $5.00 for the two week trial and I saved $35.82 on one trip. 

When I went through the list on SavingsAngel I was very careful to only chose things that we use; I don't want to stock up on things that we don't use. Plus, I had a goal to only spend $20.00 of my grocery budget on "stock-ups"  Needless to say I can't WAIT to see the new posting this next week, plan my grocery list, and see how much I can save!!

Lets see if I'm as excited next week as I am this week ;-)

Week Two - 1/28/11
WHEW!  That is all I have to say.  Because of how our grocery money lined up against the budget the next few weeks, I shopped for two weeks at once and let me tell you, that is not fun!  From the planning, to the "couponing" (Is that a word??) to the shopping.  I had to get a second cart by the time I hit the frozen section!  I don't have a picture to show this week of my Saving Angels Savings - it was too hard to do while trying to sort the groceries to put them away (frozen stuff downstairs, stuff needed for recipes this week upstairs, stuff needed for next week and stock pile items to the pantry, bathroom items, etc - too much sorting!)  But I do have totals for you :-)  The items that I specifically took from Savings Angel would have totaled $100.38 if I had paid full price for all of the items but, it only cost me $62.85 - a savings total of $37.53.  This included a good Conditioner that normally runs $4.00 that I got for $0.99, a bag of salad that was free after buying 2 bottles of dressing (which I needed and had a $1.00 coupon for!), getting dish detergant free (a $6.58 value) when I bought a rinse agent for that I had a $0.75 coupon for.  Plus throw in two boxes of diapers AND the fact that I didn't notice she charged me for three boxes of toaster strudal when I only bought two :-(  

There is one other disclaimer on this week's total - I shop at Meijer and this week was "Meijer Sale Week" - it is a huge sale on all things Meijer brand meaning there were not as many coupons to match up to name brand sale items.  I did also stock up on some Meijer items that were seperate from Savings Angel and I didn't include in the total. 

Am I going to keep going with Savings Angel? Yes.  I'm going to give it one full month and see what happens from there.  I'm learning to use the website more in order to get better deals and I'm starting to get a nice set of coupons to use which helps too!

So with that said, I'm tired! 

On a side note, if you decide to try Savings Angel - let me know, I have a code you can plug in and I get "credit" for you ($5.00 for each person - which goes toward my monthly fee!)

Thanks :-)