Intro

I've been reading a number of blogs on shopping and saving money lately, and decided to jump in.

I'm a mom of two wonderful girls ages 3 and 7, originally from Russia, currently living in Maryland. As far as grocery shopping goes, we shop Trader Joe's and local produce market for fruits, veggies and bread (they do not take coupons, but have reasonable prices and better quality produce... we think), Shoppers and Sam's club for meat/chicken/fish (Shoppers is the closest supermarket to us, and they seem to have sales just when we need them; Sam's has very nice quality pork and if we're lucky we can get it on Manager's specials (2 days before 'sell by' date), the regular price per lb is decent too). Other than that we shop Target - for all sort of things, Kohls (occasionally, as the closest one is 30 minutes away), TJMaxx and Ross - for clothes, and CVS pharmacy with their ExtraCare program is our favorite store these days. When the sales are good we can also stop by at Mars, Giant, Aldi (their milk is the cheapest around - $1.99/gallon for all varieties, but my DH is picky - he doesn't like the taste :() and WalMart (although ours never seems to have anything - except lines at the checkout lanes, so it's more of a frustration than a shopping really). We also have Safeway and FoodLion within reasonable driving distance, but they seem to be more expensive than Shoppers. Once in a while we treat ourselves to shopping at an international food market - mostly for delicacies from Russia and Western Europe - these help satisfy nostalgic cravings, but usually cost an arm and a leg.

So, that's pretty much where we are right now. I keep reading deals people find at Kroger, Mejer, Wallgreens and KMart in other states and envy them a little, but I'm sure that deals are to be found everywhere - we just need to keep our eyes open out for them ;)

With gas prices going up, we are not really willing to drive extra miles to save a few cents, so (unless the savings are substantial) we are pretty much staying within our area and only patron the stores above. And yeah, we shop online too :)

While staying home when our youngest was a baby, I discovered the 'art of couponing', but didn't master it, as it suddenly became too time-consuming when I returned back to work. That being said, I absolutely hate paying full price for anything, and try to shop sales and use coupons. The latter has become easier with a growing number of coupons that one can instantly print off the internet, so DH has canceled our paper subscription last year - 'to save some trees'. He didn't take into account that the printable coupons may actually cost us more in the end as we need to buy ink and paper for the printer, plus not all of the coupons are available on the internet and not all of the stores take printables, so I was able to convince him to get our subscription to the Sunday paper back.

That was the first step on the way to saving more and making the best of the deals that are out there. Stay tuned to see how far we can go!