Why I Started Blogging

In my What Makes Me Happy post I talked briefly about why I started blogging.  Here is the whole story for you. As a little girl I grew up in a poor family.  At school we qualified for free lunches many years and reduced lunches all the rest of the time.  I am not kidding when I say that pay day and the day after pay day were the only days when we had fresh fruit in the house.  My parents could only afford a few pieces of fruits and vegetables and they were delicous so we devoured them when we had them.  Most of the time our fridge was stocked with margarine in a tub, bologna, ground beef, and condiments.  Our pantry shelves had white bread, rice, noodles, spaghetti sauce, and packets of gravy.  Our dessert was often white rice with cinnamon and sugar. I wouldn’t change my child hood for anything.  It helped create who I am today.  I am not throwing myself a pity party.  These are just the facts.

My mom would use coupons when we shopped.  They were a way to make pay checks stretch just a little further.  They were a way of life.

In college I shopped at the discount grocery store and started using coupons on my own.  I realized that those paper cents really do add up and that I could afford more fruits, veggies, and meat when I was saving on condiments, shampoo, and any item I had a coupon for.  I knew that coupons made cents.  I was young, unmarried, and careful with my money. After  my husband and I married in 2003 I continued using coupons.  I was, obviously, almost double that I had to buy in terms of groceries.  I plugged along using coupons when I had one for an item that I was buying. Big Sister was born in September of 2006.  Talk about a life changer.  All the things you need for a baby add up.  Diapers are not cheap and why do babies grow so quickly and change clothing sizes as quickly as they do?  Babies are little money machines, but worth every single cent.  I used coupons for diapers once I was a parent.

We had just moved to Georgia and I shopped at Walmart thinking that Kroger and Publix were overpriced.  I had no idea the right way to follow the sales cycles, buy items when they are on sale, and how to stockpile.  I was purchasing what I needed to buy when I needed to buy it.

Our plan was to have our girls 18 months apart.  I am a miserable and nauseous pregnant woman.  Reality hit and we knew that we wanted two kids and that they would either be close together or far apart in age (like school age so I could sleep the day away while Big Sister was at hypothetical school or when she was a baby taking a nap).  My girls are 15 months, 3 weeks apart in age.  Yes, I had a baby while I still had a baby.  I sometimes see other people with kids so close in age and I want to give them a 20 minute break so they can catch their breath.  It was such hard work when the girls were little.

Less than a week before Little Sister was born I accidentally stumbled upon my first January Target toy clearance. Imagine that for a minute – a ready to pop pregnant woman with a 15-month-old waddling through the toy aisle of Target.  I was amazed that I could save 75% on toys for kids.  Those savings were HUGE.  A light bulb moment occurred then.  If I could save 75% on name brand name toys then I should be able to save that big on every day essentials.

A few days Little Sister was born.  The days got harder and harder and harder.  Little Sister was a screamer.  For no reason.  Well, for some reason we never determined.  She cried allthetime.  I was a stay-at-home mom with only a few friends and a scrapbooking hobby.  I was functioning on little sleep and the precision of scrapbooking was a joke.

I needed an outlet so I started couponing for reals.  I found a forum that I love (Hot Coupon World) and started saving money on diapers and more. I started with the hard drug stores and morphed to the grocery stores.  My savings were huge compared to what I knew my friends were saving.  I wanted my friends to save as much money as I was saving.  I wanted them to get the coupon high that I experienced.  So I started blogging about my deals.  Looking back at those first posts I cringe when I think of how poorly written those posts are.  I was excited to share these ways to save money and wanted to get my point across quickly.  Coupons ARE great and I wanted everyone to catch the same fever that I had.

Over the years I have continued to blog as a frugal blogger because I am passionate about people saving money.  Full price is for suckers.  I have learned that it is much cheaper to shop at Kroger, Publix, and Target than it is at Walmart.  Sales + Coupons are the best way to purchase items.  When I don’t have coupons I purchase generics. Any way that I can help people save money makes me very, very happy.

Another reason I keep blogging is because it gives me something to do.  If you don’t use skills you have then it is easy to lose them.  Blogging uses a part of my brain that I would not otherwise use.  I am able to interact with others on a variety of platforms.  Blogging is a puzzle to me.  There are so many pieces (Adsense, WordPress, Hosting, SEO, time management and more).  Some people blog as their full time income.  I recently started putting the pieces together on how people make so much money blogging and sometimes I wish I could be more successful.  Then I realize that I am a full time mom who loves helping people save money on the side.

How long have you been passionate about saving money?

Save money one coupon at a time!   Print coupons from the following websites.

Redplum |  SmartSource   |  Coupons.com

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