Going for Not Broke

As I've mentioned, I haven't quite gotten the hang of extreme couponing, and I think the reason is that I don't buy anything just because I have a coupon for it. Each week when I check the Walgreens circular to see if there are any deals within that appeal to me, I have never before seen one of its RegisterRewards items that my family could use. Last week, I did, though. I bought two boxes of Nutrigrain cereal bars for an at-work food drive, and the purchase netted me a $2 RR coupon. I'm anxious to use it. It's so nice have one!

I don't know if I don't fully understand extreme couponing or if it's just not as doable in my area. (My grocery store options are Aldi , Walmart supercenters, a regular Target , Dollar General , Walgreens and an IGA, which offers a loyalty program similar to S&H Green Stamps, through which you trade loyalty points for prizes, but I'd rather have money off my overall bill.) Aldi doesn't accept coupons, so I've been keeping track of sales and coupons I can use at the other places. I've saved as much as 3 percent on my overall grocery bill, but never the 50 percent and greater savings I see on the extreme couponing shows For my most recent shopping trip, I went to Aldi to do all of my grocery shopping. For the first time in years, I got out of the grocery store for less than $100. In fairness, this was a light shopping week, so my overall bill would've been less than normal no matter where I went. However, I plan to shop there for the bulk of m...