Today we are going to hear from an anonymous reader. I loved this story…coupons can often be much more than a piece of paper!!

Ever wonder just how much couponing can affect your life? Or the life of someone you share your knowledge with? Yes we hear the stories of how much people save and how they bought this or went there with their savings and those are wonderful stories. Mine is slightly different.
I was skeptical at first as was my husband about how well couponing could work long term.  I had a regular customer of mine who has turned into a very dear friend who offered to teach me about coupons. I started small, just buying the things that I could get either free or very cheap and was still getting everything else at my regular store. We were saving money this way and had more food in the house, so we were happy with it for a while. I gradually started shifting more and more of my shopping to Publix.  I was saving even more money and had even more food in the house, so we decided that we should do something constructive with the (now) extra grocery money.
We had intended to pay extra car payments and hopefully have our cars paid off in 2 years.  We would also put some money in the savings account for a down payment on a house. We were very excited about this and had been working towards our goal for about 3 months when life threw us a major curve ball. My husband was suddenly stricken with a mystery illness at the end of May. He was completely bed ridden for weeks.  He has slowly recovered most of his abilities. He is still not completely better and we still don’t know what is wrong, but we are grateful for the improvements he has made. During this ordeal he was completely out of work for over a month. Once he did return it was only part time.
My husband has gradually worked up to more hours, but is still not working the hours he did before all this started. If all this had happened before coupons I don’t know what we would have done!!  Since we had been couponing there was food in the house so I didn’t have to worry about major shopping during this whole thing,  I  just picked up little stuff like milk and bread. There was money in the savings account so I didn’t have to worry about him not having a paycheck AND we were ahead on the car payments (just  in case I needed to skip a payment).
If it had not been for someone taking the time to teach me about coupons, I honestly don’t know how we would have survived this summer!  I will always be grateful to my friend for sharing her knowledge with me and giving me the tools I needed to take care of my family during this crisis. I am now in the process of rebuilding my savings account in case this happens again.  I am now paying it forward by teaching one of my friends how to use coupons.
I know that we all get frustrated when we get excited about couponing and others don’t seem to get it —but, don’t give up. Share what you know with whoever will listen. You just never know whose life you could be changing. Thank you my dear dear friend for changing my life.

Thanks to my reader. What a great way to give us all a little perspective on things!!
In order to keep this new feature going, you all are going to have to volunteer to tell us all about something YOU do when you are couponing!! Your post can be about almost anything to do with couponing. You can tell us about a particularly good or bad situation you’ve dealt with as a couponer, about how you got into couponing or how couponing has impacted the rest of your life, you can make a list of things every new couponer should know…just about anything, really! If you think it’s interesting and it has to do with couponing, email me with your idea at contactiheartpublix @ gmail.com!