ALL RIGHT!! I accomplished a personal best at the market this week-I spent $97 and came home with over $300 worth of food. I know I've written about my penchant for couponing before, but I think I did pretty darn good here and I felt like "crowing" about it!  

My total included quite a bit of protein products too. Yessiree, I was able to bring home: 3 whole Zacky Farms chickens, 4 pounds of sirloin pork chops, 4 pounds of extra lean ground beef (okay, I'm not a fan of beef, but for our budget's sake, I went for it!), 1-4 pound boneless beef chuck roast (still remembering our budget) and 1 pound of turkey kielbasa.  

Not bad if I do say so myself! I also brought home 3 free boxes of the Kashi cereal I like, 1 box of Fiber One, 1 box of Cinnamon Life and another free box of generic instant oatmeal.  

There were a lot more great deals, but these were some of the highlights. And I also received a "bonus" gas card of $6.  

Now how could my ever-lovin' complain about this? I also had a $10 coupon at Kohl's, which I used to buy that same aforementioned gentleman new summer pajamas and v-neck tee shirts. Since we both already "gave" each other the cruise for our 28th anniversary-this was just some "icing" on the celebratory cake.  

Yes, my total savings for this necessary splurge in the grocery and clothing store came to well over $230.  

In today's rather poor economic times, this savings seems to be more than a bit significant. I told my mom, who said "this is why I had you do our shopping as soon as you got your driver's license, even at 16 you knew how to stretch a dollar"  

True, I've always been frugal. I'd rather go without than overspend on something. I'll research what I want and what it should cost me and promise myself that I won't break my own word to myself.  

The best part-my husband is the same way. And no, we don't spend more on gas and time than any item is worth! We comb the Sunday ads, the internet, etc...  

The only time we broke that rule was on our house 20 years ago. Honestly, when we're having to re-do something around here, we still curse ourselves about having spent the money at the top of the real estate boom in 1988. But hey, we sold our house at the top of that same market, had 2 little kids and we moved in with my parents until the house was ready.  

(And yet, saying that, we almost own our home outright and have tripled our money in equity-even after this last year.)  

Trust me when I say that no matter how wonderful my parents are, we really needed to move into our own place: FAST!  

And now, since I saved so much on all this food and extras for the house, I'm off to go use the rest of a free gift card from Starbucks on a cup of coffee and savor my ingenuity.