For the last few years I’ve seen the 52 week savings challenge pop up in January. It’s a simple way to save some extra money over the course of the year.

I’ve even tried it. It was really easy at the beginning of the year since in the first month you’re only saving $10. The year I gave it a try I noticed that by the time I got to Thanksgiving it was getting harder and harder to keep up. As we near the end of the year I have a difficult time socking away “extra” money since around the holidays there really isn’t much extra around here.

I thought about it and thought that it’s a lot easier to put larger amounts of money away at the beginning of a year and save the smaller amounts for the end of the year when I’m busy buying gifts and paying off Christmas. Saving more at the beginning of the year and tapering down gives me a better shot at success.

I like to put my money away on the same day of every week, it helps me to stay accountable and remember to do it. Friday seems as good a day as any. In many cases Fridays are pay days, so I will put my money away on Friday.

After taking a closer look at the 2016 calendar I realized that there are 53 Fridays in the year…BONUS!

I invite you to join me on this money saving journey. If we succeed we stand to end 2016 with an extra $1,379 in our pockets.

I’ve taken the liberty of putting together this handy guide to help you save, it’s not pretty but I’m still learning how to make these cool printables. Feel free to print your own copy so you can keep track of your savings. To print, just click on the image and print the PDF.

I started on January first by putting $53 away, that bonus I was talking about before. If you want to play catchup you can increase your yearly saving to $1,431.

So who’s with me? Lets do this!

On my weekly trip to my local Giant store I was smacked in the face with a new coupon policy that sent me reeling.

I depend on coupons to be able to feed my family. I make it a point of knowing the policies for the stores where I shop and take advantage of as many savings as possible. I’m by no stretch a pro couponer but I save my family a few thousand dollars a year by being smart with my coupons.

The new coupon policy states that Giant will only double one coupon per item. So if I have multiples of a coupon for the same item that I buy multiples of, they will only double the first and all the rest will be processed at face value. Looks like I’m going to have to change my shopping habits.

Also part of this new policy, they only double coupons up to $.50. Anything over fifty cents will be “doubled” up to one dollar. I use a lot of $.75 off coupons so I will now be losing $.50 of savings per coupon with this new policy.

While we’re only talking about a few cents here and there, with the amount of coupons I use I stand to lose a lot of my savings each year. Thus my grocery bill will be going up.

With the tanking of the economy we saw a surge of extreme couponers. Hell, they even have their own show. Some of these people have used and abused coupons finding loopholes in store policies. TV shows and the news media are putting the spotlight on these super couponers and stores would be crazy not to take notice.

Of course this is just my humble opinion, but I think that shows like Extreme Couponing and the people who misuse coupons have ruined things for the rest of us.

I don’t stock pile food. Stores aren’t paying me to take groceries home. I use coupons to make my dollars go a little further and save money for other things my family enjoy. Now I am being punished for the transgressions of others and I’m pretty pissed off about it.

Have you noticed a change in your store’s coupons policy recently? Have you even checked your receipt to see if there’s been a change?

If your store has made similar changes to their policies on coupons I beg of you, send them an email, tweet about it or write on their Facebook page. Maybe if we make enough noise they’ll bring the old (fair) way of accepting coupons back.