since my blog was born (only a few months ago) i have shared many photos of my shopping trips and how much money i have saved our family. but how can i really show my readers how much money we are saving in the bigger picture. like, how much money are we saving over the course of one calendar year just by using coupons.

i’ve said this in here before, but again – i am not what i would call an extreme couponer. i spend less than 2 hours a week (many weeks only 45 minutes to 1 hour) putting together my coupon shopping lists. my focus is being a great mother so couponing definitely takes a back seat to my kids. but given the small amount of time i dedicate to coupon shopping, i save our family a lot of money. one of the main goals of this blog is to share any tips i can in order to help you save your family money too.

couponing for me is all about saving money on the things we need but things i refuse to pay full price for. who wants to pay full price for diapers? or cereal? or paper products? what a waste of money! i would rather spend that money decorating our home or taking our family on vacation or donating to a cause close to our heart.

sooooo, in order to track our annual coupon savings and share with you how a little time invested can save you big money, i am adding this savings ticker to the bottom of my blog…

i was very excited to find this ticker online and my ability to personalize it. i think this visual is really going to be enlightening – and finally i will know exactly how much money i am saving in a years time.

with coupons alone, we have already saved $84.22 this year – and it’s only January 10th! pretty stoked about that! as you can see, my goal this year is to hit $5,000 in coupon savings. that’s a big number, but i like to aim high and challenge myself.

my husband is very business-minded and i always look to him when it comes to anything regarding money. my question for him was “what exactly i should include in this savings ticker?”. should i include the fact that an item is already on sale? for example, if the item is regularly $4.99, but is on sale for $2.99 – should i add in those $2 to my coupon savings? his answer was no. his reason was that anyone could walk in off the street to save that $2….and i see his point. what i am doing is taking savings a step further by adding a coupon to that low $2.99 price tag.

after our discussion, what i decided to include in the ticker is…

*paper coupons i have clipped from the paper, online, in-store ad coupons, etc – it must be a coupon i collected myself and am handing over to the cashier or have loaded onto my rewards card.

*any coupon codes i use for online shopping. an example, a week ago when i ordered clothing from Tea Collection and added a coupon code to my cart – any savings i receive from using that coupon code will be added to the ticker. this will not include free shipping costs unless i used a coupon code to receive free shipping. will also not include online items that are on sale. again, anyone can buy that item on sale, but it’s the added saving of a coupon code that i want to track.

*register rewards and gift cards given to me for purchasing items at target, for example. that money is considered free and it’s a savings to our family. so i’m adding it in!

my total savings amount will be much higher than this ticker shows given that most of what i buy is on sale already. and most of what i buy online i try my best to find with free shipping offers. but as my husband said, anyone can get those deals. what i am doing is taking that extra step by adding additional coupon savings…and adding coupons to my purchases isn’t it’s adding my stress to my life. it’s an easy additional savings, that other shoppers may not be using, that is keeping more money in our pocket.

the $84.22 dollar amount in the ticker includes my coupon savings from target and walgreens last week, as well as 2 online orders i placed using coupon codes.

so from here on, when i share photos of my shopping trip results i am going to add this savings ticker to that entry. but at any other point during the year, if you are interested in seeing where i am in regards to meeting my savings goal, the ticker will be living on the bottom of my blog page for you to see.

i’m really excited about this one!