Thoughts on Budgeting

I finally got around to tallying our expenditures for April. Here are the numbers for the food:
$535.13 total spent for food
$93.10 total spent EATING OUT (yikes!)
$31.87 total spent on baby items (i.e. DIAPERS)
So I did not achieve my goal for April's food budget. But I only lost by $35.13, which compared to previous months expenses, isn't a lot. I am pretty proud of that number actually!

But here comes the exciting part...(drumroll please)..by shopping the sales and clipping coupons, I saved us $146.81 last month! Wooo-hooooo! And we didn't starve or have to eat junk.
My best couponing deal yet has to be the Coffeemate Creamers and two newspapers I got for a total of $4! Here is how it breaks down:
Coffeemate Creamer 2/$6 store coupon
Two manufacturer's coupons $1 off
At register coupon for $3 off any purchase
Two newspapers for $3 total
GRAND TOTAL OUT OF POCKET SPENT for 4 items...FOUR DOLLARS!!!
Actual amount that I would have spent without coupons?
$11.58
Feeling of satisfaction...PRICELESS! :)

I wasn't sure after beginning this quest for coupons and savings, that spending $1.50 a week on the Sunday paper would be worth it. After two weeks I decided I would buy two papers instead of just one. Those papers have continued to pay for themselves and then some!

Be warned, couponing is addictive and very habit forming. You will find that your eyes are drawn to sale flyers, tags and tickets. You will discover that you are scanning the aisles at the store for catalina coupons. You will find yourself scouring the milk for the neon orange dairy coupons. And last but not least, your kids will be begging you to let them cut out coupons. Which of course you encourage, just not on the ones you will actually use...lol!

I just roughly estimated that if I were being paid to coupon, I would have made approximately $12.23/ hour. Not bad!