Being Frugal

I am not a frugal person by nature...but I am learning how to be a more frugal person.  It is actually exciting!  Last night, I co-hosted a little get together called "frugally feeding your families".  It was basically a bunch of women, gathered together to discuss couponing, saving money, meal planning, grocery shopping, stocking your cupboards, frugal recipes, and other money saving tips like going on vacation (disney), eating out, buying clothing, etc.  It was a great success and so informative.  I started couponing about 1 month ago and I have really saved some money AND I no longer feel the desire to drop $45 at a restaurant to eat out when we have food here to fix!  John is actually more frugal than me and he will "make do" to save money.  He is very easy to please....except that last week I had a great coupon for gatorade and he won't drink it..he has to have powerade:)  Anyways, I learned stuff last night that I did not know.  It was very exciting gettting together with other women that want to save money for their families, want to share this info, and want to be good stewards with their money.  Dave Ramsey would have been extremely proud!!!!  Everyone was so pumped after the meeting that three of the women went to publix right after leaving!  I learned some great stuff about how to combine coupons and new places to get coupons and one of the ladies handed out the amazing, very impressive and detailed price list of most anything grocery you can buy...it has prices for Wal-mart, Publix, and Costco listed for each item!!!!!  Holy Cow!  I am not a detailed person and sometimes honestly I have no idea if something is a "good" price because I have never paid attention to the price before.  This lets you compare the prices and check it when something is on sale so you know if you are getting a good deal!  My Friend, Amy, did an amazing jobspeaking about couponing.  She had already shared with me a lot of her tips but I needed the refresher.  She showed the women a bunch of stuff all laid out on the coffee table (pretty much covering the entire coffee table) and asked them how much they thought she spent on it.  Some of the women were floored to know that she actually made $3 on the stuff!!!  She is a numbers person and she described in detail how she got stuff free by using the coupons and stacking them with sale prices.  John and I have a few more payments on our van and it will be paid off...we will no longer have a car payment...YIPEE!  We want to start paying more on our mortgage payment every month...who knows, maybe we could pay it down a good bit...Dave Ramsey says you can!  On the other hand though...I found out some really cheap ways to go to Disney, which I think we are going to do for a family vacation this year....I think we might totally surprise the kids and just get everyone in the car and drive until they start seeing the signs and surprise them!  I am very glad that saving money and being frugal is "cool" these days and I am very thankful for other women that don't mind sharing their knowledge with me!