Back in 2009….
…….We were all feeling a pinch – a BIG pinch. As the cost of food was exorbitant, layoffs were popular, and people were struggling to bounce back from a housing market that had taken a wild turn.
It was around that time that I had, that year prior, left my full time job as a GS employee working for the Department of Defense, to stay home with our second child since daycare was a cost we weren’t willing to pay for. When that happened, our pay decreased by $80,000 per YEAR – it was a hard hit, and took a lot of sacrifices and budget cuts to be able to allow us to carry on and move forward.
It was also the same time that my husband was gone for 18 months to military school, and deployed for a year – so for 2 1/2 years, it was a challenge to whip our budget back into place – we started this blog as a way to deal with the difficulty of him being gone, and also as a way to spend less money and share our money tips with friends.
A year after we started, we didn’t realize but we had 500 – 1000 people per day checking out the blog – at the time, we realized that word was getting around that we were helping people save… so we continued.
Instead of taking our kids out to the park, and enjoying our time with them, we spent out time searching for blog deals, writing on the blog and making trips to the store to find deals to share. At the time, we really didn’t think we were doing much in the way of helping anyone, but we did have a few great readers that continually let us know we were helping them trim pennies.
It was around that same time that I started teaching coupon classes – we weren’t ever willing to do them at our home, but we DID do them at local library meeting rooms and also at the local community centers in town. We also drove as far as Sierra Vista when several of you asked us to teach a class to your church – we also took care of the Border Patrol Community just a year after that, too.
I’ll be honest and say at the time, David did not think that it was a great idea – after spending all week ON the blog, the last thing he wanted to see was a weekend spent doing more. Although I wanted to do free classes, we also could not justify the time spent teaching and preparing if we were not able to at least earn back what we were spending in room rentals and materials – as room rentals at the library (at least out in MY area) are NOT free, materials and time are not either. I passed around sign up sheets and held many coupon classes – many on weekends, many very late at night, and some that took over half of a day if not more to accomplish.
In 2010, David came home on mid-tour and we planned for baby 3. It wasn’t long after that we were well on our way to having our third, and he was scheduled to come home within months from Iraq. We had really made some great strides in our own personal budget – by opting for a much smaller home, renting for LESS and using his deployment earnings were able to pay over $50,000 in student loans.
We, at the same time, monetized the blog to help bring in a little extra income too – up until that time (2011) we also paid several contributors to help write content for the blog and assist as needed as contributors. We had ads on the blog – some of you expressed disinterest in that (still to this day – 2016. Realize that your ability to read the blog for free is dependent on these ads!)
It wasn’t long after that we were featured on local media (several newspaper articles and Television) as we were able to help people streamline their food budget with coupons in hopes that they would be able to free up money in other areas to apply to pay down debt, and save for retirement.
In addition to local media coverage, Dave Ramsey’s Team reached out to us after a wonderful reader had told him that OUR blog was critical in helping them climb out of debt – after seeing our focus on debt reduction, and our commitment to NO credit cards on our site he reached out to us to help him promote several of his local Phoenix and even National events over the next few years.
In late 2012
Traffic had increased exponentially to our blog – as we were able to focus on carrying store matchups for all of your favorite stores – Target, Bashas, Fry’s, Safeway – even Albertsons.
Due to the Extreme Couponing show, interest was at an all time high – although we didn’t consider ourselves Extreme by any means, we were still able to help you with ethical couponing. Saving money was incredibly important to US, and we knew it was for you too.
A Lot of you looked for the weekly matchups on the blog. Mega Sales at Fry’s were extremely challenging for us – with some exceeding 600 items, we paid contributors to get up early and go to the store for us and grab pictures of all the items, as we spent up to 14-16 hours (sometimes overnight) entering prices to bring you an accurate matchup.
But, by 2013 we saw some HUGE changes to couponing
In the early part of the year, the use of coupons was a rather BIG deal. Many people were stocking up and not just a little but by the cartload. We started to see people selling coupons and selling their stockpile in local groups.
We saw people who would buy over 50 – 60 of a particular item on sale, after ordering tons of coupons. You also saw lots of restrictions follow.
Double coupons ended at Fry’s. It wasn’t long after that Fry’s placed greater restrictions on coupon use, and placed a new emphasis on lower prices and digital offers. Safeway was not long after, and they stopped doubling too.
Greater restrictions were placed on coupons altogether, as retailers saw coupon misuse happening more and more – although it wasn’t widespread, it was the select few who made such an impact that policies came towards a huge overhaul.
It was at that SAME time that we started to limit OUR trips to the store. With 3 kids + 1 more on the way, it wasn’t as easy for us to get there. Not to mention we stopped subscribing to the local paper and sourcing different ways to grab deals (ie. Local farmers market, less trips, different lifestyle).
One thing we kept though is coupon matchups. What you may not realize is that coupon matchups take hours to write up. They aren’t just something that type themselves – we actually paid contributors at this point to write our matchups – to the tune of almost $1,000 per month. For several years we did this – over that time, we noticed that popularity OF matchups and using them had slowly decreased.
Albertsons was one of the first stores we dropped due to such a huge decrease in use. The deals there were few and far between. We did, however, keep the other stores. At the same time, were were also blessed to become part of the Favado Group of almost 100 bloggers. Instead of typing up ALL of our matchups ourselves (or, paying for a contributor to do them), we signed a contract with Favado.
We would be able to keep matchups for our favorite stores, in exchange for doing a store (or two) in Favado. Because the interest in Albertsons had declined so drastically, we did not justify doing that store. But we DID opt for Bashas, Safeway and Fry’s. In exchange we were able to get all the stores we have now – though we were on a deadline, we were not able to skip ANY weeks, and we were afforded only one week off per year for our ads.
Since the matchups were done by contributors in other areas, many of you noticed differences in prices – which do come as a result of region. Over the last six months, however, we have seen an even greater decline in matchups. While we made nightly trips to the store and paid contributors to go regularly on a daily basis, interest in deals as a whole had taken a dive. We hoped that a new focus on the 99 Only Store would help re-excite the masses, but eventually that interest died down as well.
There were many Mega Sale weeks where we spent hours, upon hours (from 5-6 a.m. to sometimes 11 p.m. and our entire weekend) working on mega Sale deals, for a 2-week period and maintaining a beautiful list only for readers to mention on Facebook that they never knew the Mega was going on (this after 2 weeks!) and some even asking why we stopped doing them — while that entire time we had them on the blog. We have always kept a full mega list matchup, but if interest continues to decline, that eventually will stop too.
That told us your interest IN deals themselves just wasn’t there. We loved having your interest but it was definitely gut wrenching to see such a decline – especially when we were paying contributors and spending our own time taking such good care of our matchups. At that point we realized changes were needed, and those changes started around the 1st of the year – some of you noticed less posts, less store trips. ..and less focus on grocery deals as a whole.
Fast forward to 2016:
We haven’t clipped for quite a long time, and we mentioned a few weeks ago that is because we changed the way we ate. It was NOT immediate – it was over time – a period of almost 3 years. We did NOT mention it, and nor did we want to, because instead of being happy we were in a better place in terms of our health, many instead thought it was ridiculous.
Post Deployment Anxiety is something my husband suffers from. Some days are better than others, but it’s a daily struggle. What we have also seen is that because anxiety is not a physical war injury, many people underestimate it’s significance. MY blog time DID impact my husband’s ability to get better. He needed ME. Obviously being self employed it’s impossible to just stop entirely – but cutting back is ONE thing I made a promise to do for HIS well being – and little did I know that would drastically reduce my own stress level too.
Sometimes people associate saving money and one’s ability “to save” with that person’s skill in how much they can bring home from the grocery store for pennies. Saving money goes far beyond groceries – you can save yourself the costs of doctor visits by taking better care of what you eat. You can save money by avoiding the urge to shop in general.
Even more, you can save HUGE by being more self sufficient… making your own food instead of relying on packaged items in store, learning how to plant your own – are all things we have done but yet tend to get forgotten in the midst of convenience and profits.
Those ways aren’t always popular on blogs because teaching people not to spend doesn’t equate to blog profits ;) Telling people not to shop is not exciting for most.
Helping you save is still our goal. And just recently we were featured on the local news, helping Arizona Midday highlight some of the best weekly deals going on in stores… highlighting the POGO Pass (which is great for summer break!), FREE things to keep your kids busy and more.
But in light of this, we have also entertained more emails than we thought we would ever see.
Readers who can’t grasp why Bashas matchups came to a close; why we don’t carry Albertsons on our site – why we have slowed down on deal posts – and why we have missed posting some of the best deals on ice cream and crazy Easter Candy.
Changes are Coming
- One of the biggest changes is that you will NOT see ad matchups for Bashas or Albertsons – while we haven’t had Albertsons for a while, you won’t be able to find Bashas. As hard as that might be for you to accept, it was a decision we had to make based on lack of interest from readers. If that same lack of interest overlaps to other stores, eventually those other stores will disappear from our lineup as well with Safeway being the next to go.
- We are going to be VERY selective about the items we post. If we DO share something it’s because we feel like it’s a really great deal – one that is easier to grab.
- You will see more recipe posts from us – we love spending time in the kitchen, and we have a rather HUGE garden. We’ll be helping you find ways to use those things you are growing this year.
- For the last 3 years we have been very reliant on our Essential Oils – we have shared our “why” with you. While not everyone may understand our love interest with them, we find them very important aspects in our health. We don’t do well visits, regular doc visits – except for having babies we we don’t make visits at all. Oils and (Whole) food are a huge part of that.
- You will see more meaningful content from us – I have worked at home for 6 years. I balance family, kids, maintaining a home, and more… we have made huge strides in our OWN budget, paying off over $110,000 in student loans in just under 4 years – although the military helped us get a great start, it definitely didn’t pay for all of our grad school. We feel like we can bring you lots of tips on time management, budgeting and even personal sacrifices to inspire you to reach that point in your life too. Paying off that much in loans is something that most people spend a lifetime trying to do, so we feel blessed that we were able to knock it out early. It was not easy.
Many have pointed to other sites this past few months and mentioned things we should do – stores we should carry, and deals we forgot to highlight. We know we don’t get every deal – we don’t want to. We don’t even try to – with 4 kids, and with another that’s almost here, MY #1 goal is to be a parent to them. Understandably many other sites employ over a dozen or more people – of course, with that many people, posting around the clock is easier.
We never wanted to take that route and we explained that several weeks ago – that was never our goal to start with.
I am excited to help you in different areas of your life. While helping you save money on food is important too, we want others to realize that making better food choices in the way of Organic and Whole Foods is something that everyone can do.