My name is Patrice and I live in Santa Barbara, CA, with my husband and our two boys, who eat a huge amount of food each day…the two boys that is; my husband eats a huge amount sometimes, just not everyday. We’ve lived in this beautiful city since 1992; this is where we’ve raised our boys, raised our pets, started our businesses, and made our friends. It’s a crazy expensive place to live, so it’s a good idea to know how to be a smart shopper.

I’ve always been on the lookout for a great deal. Not always out of necessity, but just because I can; I love the challenge of seeing if I could find ‘a better deal’ on something we needed or wanted. I don’t know where I got that particular gene, but my husband is pretty happy because it’s saved us a lot of money over the years.

I pick things up quickly and like a good challenge, so using coupons when I went grocery shopping just kinda came naturally. Then we had kids. And then we started our own business. And then I quit my full-time job. So then I had to use coupons to really help make things work. I got really good at it. I would come home from a super successful shopping trip and couldn’t wait to see if my husband could even come close to guessing how much I just saved us. My most memorable grocery shopping trip ever was with a $20 bill that I took to two grocery stores, and I came home with four plastic grocery bags full of food. And I had some change left over.

I would brag to my friends. I never knew how interesting it could be to sit around and swap grocery shopping and money-saving stories with good friends. After every one of these cool conversations I’d come away with even more useful information, and a little more commitment to save even more money next time!

I have some friends who are just as addicted to coupon shopping as I am…but I’ve also found out that not everyone likes it, or cares about it, or is even the least bit interested in it. At least they’d politely listen and smile at me! But that’s ok…everyone has a different shopping style, just like we all have our favorite stores, brands, viewpoints on what makes a deal a good one, etc. That’s why I love my friends, they’re all interesting and we all listen to each other’s ideas and interests…and smile even if we could never feel the same way about some of these things ourselves.

I also found out that just because someone is interested in using coupons doesn't mean (1) they've figured it all out, (2) they've learned how to make it really worthwhile, or (3) haven't gotten so frustrated keeping up they ended up losing interest. So I decided to use what I’ve learned to help others get it all figured out...and stick with it.