One More Deal and All You Challenge Wrap-Up

I just have to share one more couponing deal from the weekend. Late Saturday night, after driving home from helping my sister move, we stopped at Walmart so I could use my $2.50/1 Electrasol Finish dishwasher detergent coupons, which expired on Sunday. I couldn't let such high-value coupons for such a necessary product expire! I also remembered to use the $3.00/2 Pull-Ups wipes coupons, since I knew that Walmart carried a small size for just $1.64, making them $.14 each after the coupon.

On these 7 items, I saved $13.50 in coupons! Sometimes the "coupon savings" on a transaction is not that meaningful if I wouldn't buy the products at regular price anyway, but these are all products that I need and use, coupons or no coupons. The cashier at Walmart was really impressed with my savings. She said that I was inspiring her to get back to couponing. Yay!

Also, yesterday was the last day of the All You Grocery Challenge. Here's what I spent last week:
Giant - $23.02 & $.48 & $3.06 & $4.59 (loving Giant this week!)
Harris Teeter - $3.45 & $16.01
Safeway - $4.06
Bloom - $2.04
Total: $56.71

Here's my spending for the 4 weeks of the contest:
Week 1 - $18.85
Week 2 - $62.92
Week 3 - $57.23
Week 4 - $56.71

(I have to double-check my receipts; there might be one or two missing from these totals. But this is pretty close to my actual spending.)

Overall, I feel good about the challenge. I stayed under budget each week, and it was definitely a good exercise in discipline to strictly keep to the $75/week.

It's true that a lot of it did not involve changing my habits very much, since I have learned so many savings strategies in the last year. There were a few instances, however, where we would have splurged on something but did not because of the challenge. For instance, we had a really busy day on Saturday and ordinarily probably would have gotten fast-food takeout for lunch. But because of the challenge I packed some convenience foods that I had gotten on coupon deals and we waited until we arrived at my sister's to eat a late lunch. It was a good reminder that if we really need to we can spend even less than we do now, and how rare it is that we really "need" to splurge.

Thanks to All You for hosting the contest, and it will be exciting to see who wins!