Day 1

Hi!
I am Jo, and I am about to embark on a one year experiment. The objective, CHANGE.  Change in myself, my family and even my community. How do I intend to make such a change? With change of course, that is pocket change.

The idea started a couple of months ago when I sat on my couch and watched an episode of TLC's Extreme Couponing. It blew my mind! These shoppers were going into a grocery store with binders full of coupons and coming out with hundreds of items and paying very little for them. I did have some of the other common reactions to the show, who really needs all of that stuff? But my present financial situation had my inner voice saying "I do!" So I did more research, could some one really save that much money couponing? I looked into some of the blogs of the featured couponers from the show and was really impressed. They all had really good information about how they got started and advice for other new couponers. They had similar stories to mine, some hardships financially that had led them to look for other alternatives. But through couponing they were able to persevere.

I started couponing a bit, on a very small scale. Going on the advice from these blogs I was able to not run out of toilet paper! Now to some that might be a weird statement but to other's like me it was a blessing. A little background on me: I am 30 years old, I have been married for 7 years and have 2 kids (my daughter is 8 and my son is 4). I live at my mother's house because it saves money and my mom is disabled and needs the company and help from time to time. We actually get paid by the state to take care of her. That is our main income, $1,000 a month to do what I was brought up to do- take care of my family. My husband has been out of a job since October, 2009. So he is my stay at home dad and takes care of the kids. I was working at a call center for almost 3 years, waking up at 4 am every day to drive into Eugene.

Then things got complicated. To sum up the situation without going into too much detail, I now have a 6 month old step son.  No, I did not separate from my husband and am really close to my step son's mom. I just choose to handle it differently then other women would have. I did, however, decide that I needed to do something different. The stress from my complicated family situation and my job persuaded me to look else where in life to find myself. I was suffering from anxiety attacks and became more introverted then I had ever been. My sister in law suggested that we go back to school. So we enrolled in a small college and decided to take night classes. The thought about going back to school scared me so much. To work on top of going to school scared me too (I do know that a lot of people can handle going to school and working a full time job and I applaud you) so I decided to quit my job so I could focus on school. In hindsight I sometimes wonder if that was the right decision to make, I was the main bread winner in the family and I just walked away from it. But I know that in the end I am bettering myself for my family and am studying for something that will eventually benefit my family more then my call center job.

My family means the world to me and anything I can do to better their lives, sign me up. I started printing and cutting coupons. I started scoping out stores and reading blogs. I have a small little cardboard coupon organizer I bought at the dollar store and I have been doing OK so far but there were things I also started to notice.
1. You can save more when combining store coupons with manufactures coupons.
2. The more coupons you have the more you save.
3. There are a lot of coupons for healthy foods and pet supplies.

The wheels in my head started turning again...what if???
What if I really made a go at this, full on couponing. How much money can I save?
What if I get a lot of coupons, so that I can actually have food in the house all month long?
What if I also try to help out others, friends who need diapers, food, toiletries?
What if I even was able to donate some of these items to local charities...I could even donate pet supplies to the local animal shelter!

Then the full realization of this blog came about. I am going to record everything here on this blog and show others that they could change with pocket change too! At least that is my goal. Let me be your Guinea pig. Stay tuned and watch how couponing can change your life.

Thanks, Jo