Off to a Good Start

The South Brunswick De-Clutter Club has successfully morphed into the South Brunswick Savings Club. Now remember, this is about saving money, not clutter! Keep up the good work of de-cluttering, earn money from your de-cluttering and learn to be spare in your spending as well as in accumulating clutter!

Kathy Quinto-David and her husband Jolly brought an amazing packet of informtation about how to cut your expenses while still being generous to others. The packet includes instructions on how to get started on your savings journey, how to get coupons, how to organize your coupons and other cost savings tools, and how to create a shopping and storage master-plan. They have included an extensive collection of tips and techniques about how to shop for food and save money using coupons, websites, store specials and shopper savings cards. This section is full of great examples to make this process as simple and effective as possible.

Kathy has also shared with us time and money saving ideas such as "Things you can freeze that you may never have thought you could," portioning your purchases to make preparation and use more convenient; a list of websites for stores and coupon sources; and a booklist of good books on the topic, most available here at the library.

Also, she has shared some of the tools she has found that work well with planning your savings, such as a meal planner, a shopping organizer and a cost savings record. Other tip sheets include Seasonal Savings and monthly "specials." They have even given us enrollment forms to get savings cards at most of the local grocery stores, including a Store Directory for the ShopRite in North Brunswick.

Thank you very much to Kathy and Jolly for preparing this fantastic packet! We will continue to have copies of this packet for newcomers at our future meetings. Please join us at our next meeting on April 5, 2012 at 7:00 in Program Room 1B and on the first Thursday of every month. We will continue the great discussion that we started last night, sharing knowledge, resources and coupons. Bring any coupons for products you don't use and pick up some for products you do use. We will also start a collection of expired coupons that we will send off to a military base, so come prepared and leave armed with the ability to save money and have a good time doing it!