The Grocery Guru saves the day!

We are now officially poor. :) Well, we have always been poor, lol, but now with Joe unemployed we can really be considered poor. My friend Rachel knew about our destitute situation and decided to take pity on me. She invited me to go along with her to a seminar by the local Grocery Guru. He gives free lectures at libraries about how to save money while shopping. I have always avoided the coupon thing. It just seems like SO MUCH WORK! I just really didn't want to do it. The way this grocery dude does it, though, is pretty easy and cool. He makes your menu for the week along with a shopping list and then tells you where to find every single coupon in order to save tons of money (and it's free!).

After his seminar, he took any of us who wanted to go to the store to do some thrifty shopping. There were eight of us who went and I must say that we were quite the geeky sight! We all had to trail him around the store in a single file line. He would tell us what to buy and we would all dive in on the stuff like a bunch of vultures on their prey. It was pretty great!

Anyway, we ended up buying $160 worth of groceries for only $35! I was so impressed. We also got two free movie tickets back from the store worth $24. The thing I liked the most was that everything we bought was stuff we would totally eat...cereal, milk, crackers, chicken, spaghetti, cake, etc. Everything he buys for the week goes in to his menu plan.

So, here is my loot. I was so proud of it that I took a picture. Kind of like a new baby, hehe. Can you believe that I only spent $35??