Product of my rais'n

I'm a product of my practically impractical parents. My dad is the person who stocks up on things when he has coupons and/or they are on sale (you should see his spaghetti sauce and/or salad dressing collection), my parents go on multiple vacations each year and my mom has a wardrobe collection that puts most people to shame. Being multifaced, you can call him frugal in the same sentence as calling him discerning and he'll agree. His policy: cheap is good, free is better and quality is worth paying for. ML's policy is one of my favorites - "oooh, lets get it."

This post is more about savings versus impracticality, however it seems that in my case, they go hand in hand. If I hadn't have saved money, I couldn't have spent it friviously. If only I could close the gap here and just save the money. Period. End of story. But I digress. I realize that my coupon obsession gets to be laughable at times, and it often takes me forever to get through the grocery store, much to Nick's shagrin. In my defense, I have my coupon organizer set up to match the aisles in the grocery store to save time searching. I take time to compare prices and amounts and 9 times out of 10 will buy something based on price versus brand, unless its mayonnaise, peanut butter, cereal or ketchup because some things are worth the extra $0.25 (see above policy regarding quality).

I know the anecdote that every penny counts, so I dutifully cut out my $0.35 coupons (doubled to $0.70 at Giant Eagle) and use them alongside the $1.00 and $1.50 offs. Well, last night, we saved a whole bunch of pennies...to the tune of $107.16. Fuel Perks saved us 20% off the top of the grocery bill - which was approximately $50, but the rest was manufacturer coupons and Giant Eagle Advantage card savings. Since this was a new record for us, I figured it was blogworthy. I won't lie, I also wanted to brag a little (ok a lotta) bit too. I suppose the money that we saved is technically spent, but it just blows my mind that by doing what we do anyway - gas and taking a few extra minutes to cut coupons, we have $107.16 that we wouldn't have had otherwise.