Math Class

Thursday our ward had a "back to school" Enrichment night. We had mini classes: Seminary (about the importance of the scriptures), Literature (going over good books-children's and adult's), Lunch (dinner), Home Ec (a homemade bread making demo) and Math class, which I taught. I'm glad I didn't really have to teach math. My class was about saving money by bargain shopping! I was so nervous about this simple 15-20 minute class and prepared quite a bit for it. I enjoy teaching, but when I was up there my voice was shaking... silly. Oh, well. I feel like it turned out pretty well.

I'm sure you all wish you were there! So I'll give you the recap/outline. (This may be way more information than any of you want... its mostly for journaling purposed, so feel free to skip the rest.) I had some clothes displayed that I had gotten at Children's Place and Old Navy for some great prices and the class played "guess how much I paid." Then talked about these basic things:

Save On Clothes, Etc.
1. Shop sales (end of season sales)
2. Online shopping (watch for discount codes)
3. Sign up for mailing list for places you shop
4. Buy used (thrift, yard sales, craigslist, etc)

We then played the "guess how much I paid" game with groceries and household item: cereal, dressing, spaghetti sauce, crescent rolls, diapers, toothbrushes... This is where most people were amazed. Without going into all the details, we talked about these 10 ways to save money on groceries:

Save On Groceries
1. Coupons
2. Store Brands
3. Buy in Bulk
4. Never, never grocery shop when you're hungry and always shop with a list
5. Making your Own Baby Food
6. Freeze Food
7. Gardening and Canning
8. Plan Menus
9. Leave the family at home.
10. Stock up.

I then talked specifically about coupons and how they can save $100s each year, but you have to know how to use them. You can't just use a coupon because you have it! (Example: There's a sale going on at Albertsons this week. I bought 100 items, paid about $87, saved $179.22 by shopping the sales and promotions, and saved $58.55 in coupons! So my bill would have been about $330 if I had bought those same items at regular price!)

1.Combine coupons with sales
2.Know coupon policies
3.Accumulate coupons
a. Obtain multiples
b. Printables:
www.boodle.com
www.boxtops4education.com
www.coupons.com
www.smartsource.com
4.Organize coupons

When I was asked to do the class, I thought '15 minutes? What am I going to say for 15 minutes?!" However, I could have talked about it for hours! I really do enjoy bargain shopping and saving money. I told one sister in the ward, this is my "job." Its a way I can "earn" money, per se, for our family... or at least stretch our money as far as possible. Also its helped with our food storage! Store what you eat, right! Anyway, I'm glad the class is done! All in all, it went really well and people were amazed by the prices I had gotten things for.

(Most of my info and the site and refer to the most is www.pinchingyourpennies.com)