Courting supermarkets

Here is what I like about clipping coupons and watching sales. The realization that supermarkets are really compeating against each other for my business. I am a little more empowered to purchase from stores that are offering deals that appeal to me. I've never really seen myself as having any real power over these giant shelve lined stores. I've felt something like a consumer pushed around in a current of other shoppers. As if my cart is being pushed down a track, pushing past things I have no intention of buying. They will make sure I see them though, those impulse buys that they want me to believe I really need. Watching shoppers, and figuring out how to get them to spend more has been a very profitable industry for a very long time. From placing the sugar filled cereal in view of the children, to making sure we enter through the area where the produce is (let's face it, produce has the highest mark up!) and filling end caps with items that are appealing to most shoppers and easy to throw into our carts. Today was different though, I started out with a list of things I needed to buy, and most of them items that were either on sale, or that I had a coupon for. As I strolled the isles on a busy Sunday afternoon, I had no need to see what was on sale isle by isle, because I had already visited the weekly ad in my Sunday paper. In fact I had reviewed all of the store ads, and went to the stores that offered the best deals for me. I told myself that I would try couponing for a month to decide if it is something that I want to continue doing for my family. But right now with a total monthly savings of over $150 dollars, and having more food then we normally buy for the money I've spent due to a little bit of planning, I already feel like this is something we will continue. I keep checking my bank account, and expecting to see it go down at a rate higher then t is. Now I just need to find a way to organize all of those little slips of paper!

Laura coupon deal of the day!

I went to Walgreens, because Josh was out of deodorant. He likes the old spice one, mostly because I think he is entertained by the commercials. (Good marketing makes an old man product hip!) I had a buy 2 deodorant, get a body wash free. At walgreens the deodorant was also buy one, get one 50% off, and I had a coupon for a dollar off that. So here is how it broke down. 4.99 Deodorant 4.99 Deodorant With 50% off- 1.00 = 1.50 Second deodorant 4.99 Body Wash Free! Should have been 4.99+4 14.97 but instead cost me 6.49 But the best deal of all is knowing next time Josh forgets to tell me that he is out of deodorant, I can simply go into the laundry room, and bring out a brand new deodorant. I've saved so much money so far, and only on things I actually buy! Why haven't I done this before?

Couponing

Am I already turning into one of those crazy couponing people? You know who I'm talking about right? the crazy woman who keep enough cereal to withstand any natural disaster in the garage just because they had a coupon? Okay, so maybe I'm not THAT bad, but I have to admit that there are currently 6 boxes of cereal in my laundry room. I couldn't resist the free milk, or the cheap prices. $5.00 is really cheap for 3 boxes of cereal (inflation is really starting to be a problem.) and then to get up to $4.00 back in milk it makes it an outstanding deal. We also did double coupons for soy milks, meaning my normal organic milk that costs over $3.00 a container cost me a whole 1.27 after a double coupon, and the all natural darigold sour cream that was on sale for 2 for 7 ended up costing me 1.12. I have to say, another happy day in my coupon adventures. I also discovered that several store club cards will allow you to load your cards with coupons so you don't even have to lug all of their store coupons around with you. HOW easy is that? http://just4u.safeway.com/couponweb/myoffers.aspx?pid=15136&nid=10&zid=pp27&mod=pscrd If you would like to try to load coupons to your safeway club card as well

First Weekend of being a Scissor Saver!

After a long winter of silence I decided it’s time to post on my blog again. As always I tend to be focused on food, and spending money. With the cost of food starting to go up, and the speculation of fuel related inflation to all food items getting worse around June, I decided it’s time to start saving money. Determined that there had to be a way to get more bang for my buck, I’ve decided that it’s high time to start clipping coupons. Let me fist explain, I’m the kind of girl who has never really used coupons (at least not for groceries, I’m a sucker for the Bed Bath and Beyond coupons.) Who will get a save .50 coupon on package of something I buy often, and throw it in the trash thinking “Whatever, it is worth .50 cents to me to not have to lug this thing around.” Even if I know in a month I’m going to buy that item again. Recently though I realized that coupons are only a part of a much bigger picture and it’s really all about timing. I’ve always been quite the sale shopper. I wait until things are on sale to purchase them, and if something else is on sale, I’m okay with switching brands to save a little bit of money. But what if I could hit a sale AND use a coupon? Suddenly my .50 coupon, mixed with a dollar sale turns into $1.50 an item sale. So this weekend I decided that it was time to start this couponing endeavor. It started out with a dog food coupon at Costco. Nearly $40.00 bags of dog food with a $10.00 coupon limit of 2. But we went 2 days in a row because we had a little bit of extra money that we could spend on dog food this month, and are totally sure the dogs will eat it. We have over two months of dog food in our storage bin, and saved a bit of money in the process. Today was my first attempt at grocery store couponing. I’m not saying I’m any good about it, but I saved some money, and saving money in any capacity means I’m not bad at it either. Today the coupon shopping took place at an Albertsons store, because the Sunday paper had a double coupon ad, and an offer that if you buy 3 boxes of cereal that you get 2 gallons of milk free. On top of that I had a $1.00 coupon for the brand of cereal that I intended to purchase and a double coupon for the cereal as well. I also had $1.00 off soy milk, and another double coupon. I also had a coupon for lunch meat, and the same applied with double coupon day. All in all I walked away with a voucher for free milk on my next visit worth a $4.00 future milk purchase and I’m looking grand total of 48.1%! Total money saved this week clipping coupons: - 51.70 less $2.00 newspaper = 49.70 in total savings. I have to be honest here, not all of these savings will be realized this month, as the dogs will not eat all of the dog food this month, but even divided up between two months that is still a grand total of 24.85 realized this month, and 24.85 in food will not have to buy next month. I think this will be a money saver I continue to work on. I have more coupons to use, and am planning another trip tomorrow, to another store in order to finish my grocery shopping.