Getting My Spending Habits Under Control

There are a lot of spending rules that I used to have for myself that I don't anymore. Maybe it was extenuating circumstances, maybe it was laziness; it is hard to tell. Since I have been couponing and seeing that there ARE really areas that I can save, I have started thinking about what I have to change.

1. Preplanning purchases and looking for deals. My son needed a baseball bat for his team. My son was giving me grief for not having one for him but instead of just taking him to Sports Authority or a specialized store where I knew a bat would be $40+, we ended up looking in the paper for any baseball sales and finding a sale at Kmart (%20 off) and using a coupon and the bat ended up being $14.99. I know that doing this consistently for both small and large purchases will make a difference.
2. Organizing items and leaving a table of contents in the front. Recently I had the hives for some unknown reason. (I think it was a sample I ate at Costco) Now, I already have all our medicines in one place, but if I would have had a list of what was in that box, when my husband went looking for me, he would have seen that we already had Benedryl, Cortisone, and other anti-itch cremes. Instead, we ended up buying more at the store and not even on sale! Bad move. If I was more organized and had a list of the contents of the box, I don't think we would have had to go to the store.
3. Planning food menus around what the sales are. When I started couponing, I started to notice what the meat specials were in particular. Planning my meals around what is on special has reduced the amount of money I spend on meat and reduced my grocery budget in total. We even have better meat since I tended to buy the same thing over and over again before. Now, we have more variety and lower prices.

These are just a few of the smaller changes that I am going to make. I am sure there are many more to come in my quest to completely remake our family finances. I'll let you know how it goes!