not in terrible shape.

How bad is it that I got SO. EXCITED. when I opened the grocery ads this morning to discover they were doing triple coupons this week?

Maybe a little too excited. I love coupons, and I especially love the ones that are doubled. I found our coupon book (everything’s separated by month) and went to work.

Total savings on this week’s groceries was $26.04. $15 came from coupons. Nice 🙂

A few years ago, the husband heard about Dave Ramsey and started on his way to financial success. He saved the $1000 emergency fund, paid off his credit cards, paid off his car and started building the rest of his emergency fund. When we moved in together, I started down that road. We paid off my credit card last year (my car was paid off before that) and are pretty excited that we’re only about $3000 from our ultimate emergency fund (the one that can cover us for about 6 months if someone loses a job.) We dipped into the emergency fund for our house downpayment. Otherwise, we’d have the funds.

It’s amazing that in the past 3 years, we’ve both saved the money, paid off our debt, paid for a wedding and honeymoon (in cash) and are now in our first house.

But we always want more. I think we want to be at the point where we could live for a year and have the freedom to quit a job without having to have a job already lined up. We also want to have kids. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

It excites me to hear that my mom is reading Dave’s book. I think my brother also read (or is reading) Dave’s book. And I love good blogs and websites about financial success. Real Simple has great checklists. I read their site often. I also received a link to this blog, which I need to spend more time reading.

Times are tough, but I don’t think they’re going to be tough forever. I am interested in the what-can-I-do-right-now tips for saving money (hence my love of coupons), but we’re also looking at what we can do for long-term success. My goal for the rest of this month is to really figure out Quicken and use it. It might show me where I’m blowing money (Target) and where I can cut back (cell phone).

So what are you doing to save??