Using coupons for frugal savings. . .

Recently, I've been trying my hand at using coupons and rebates to save money on items that I normally use. Although coupons for food are few and far between (unless I want to purchase heavily packaged convenience foods, which I normally don't), I've found some great deals on personal products that I use regularly.

For example, here's my recent haul from Walgreens:

Colgate toothpaste: $3.29 (received $3.50 "Register Rewards")
Blink tears: $7.99 (used $2 manufacturer coupon, and received $8 "Register Rewards")

Paid a total of $9.28 and received a total of $11.50 in return (basically, I "made" money on this transaction).

Then, I turned around and purchased:

Almay makeup: $12.99 (used $3 Walgreens coupon)
Nature Made vitamins: $10.99 (used $1 manufacturer coupon)
Nature Made vitamins: $10.49 (was 'free' as part of buy-one-get-one free promo)
Used $11.50 Register Rewards

So, on this purchase I paid out a total of $8.48.

In the end, I received $45.75 worth of goods (items that I needed to purchase anyway) and paid a total of $17.76 out of pocket!!! I'll also get a free Denise Austin exercise DVD using the Walgreens Easy Saver rebate booklet, because I bought more than $15 in Nature Made products. The bad news here is that Walgreens is apparently phasing out their Easy Saver catalog (which contains high value coupons and rebate offers). That is truly disappointing, since I've just begun to learn the Walgreens system; I'm hopeful that Rite Aid will continue its rebate program, although I've also read recently that Rite Aid is in danger of bankruptcy itself.

In any event, some of the websites I've found to be very helpful in pointing out deals such as the ones I recently got are:

Hot Coupon World
Money Saving Mom
Hip2Save

The area where I'll need to be careful is in only purchasing those products that I would have needed anyway, and in continuing to cut coupons from the Sunday paper (I can find these for free at the county library, most weeks) so that my drugstore deals save me even more money. I'll keep you all updated on my progress with this, and I would love to hear your own thoughts on using coupons and rebates as well as suggestions for other websites that might help. . . .