Friday, January 21, 2011

Extreme Couponing...Sort Of

Sorry to post so late but yesterday was a long day. I caught this show a few days ago on TLC about extreme couponers. These are people who plan way ahead for grocery shopping and go crazy with coupons saving hundreds to thousands of dollars and have stockpiles of food and more. I began to turn the idea around in my head of extreme couponing and set off on the web to research this grocery game. I began by signing up with coupon blogs/sites for ideas and the 101 on couponing. My favorite site is frugalcouponliving.com. Then after a little schooling, I hunted down coupons from manufacturers on sites like coupons.com. I also signed up with companies like Kellogs, Betty Crocker, and Seventh Generation for special member coupons. These worked out great and I was excited by my first hunt, I felt as if I could get the hang of this. My last step was to load eCoupons from two sites to my shopping card. I had just picked up a new card, as my old one had the barcode pretty much smudged off, and it was at home. Once home, I used my phone to try to register my card on the Fry's website but no success, my first dsappointment. I decided that we could forego those on this trip and began to get organized. My earlier research told me that organization is the make or break of this game. I started with writing my shopping list, then clipped my printed coupons and matched those up to my list. Finally, I went through the circulars and clipped competitor coupons and checked out my store's sale. I set a small goal of $20 savings and off John, Christian, and I went. Once we arrived I pulled out my list and my phone's calculator and we met our first aisle, produce, and the disasters began. John and I don't shop together as I am a slow shopper and I believe it drives him nuts, so it started off with me chasing after him and Christian who had the cart. Then I learned that the calculator on my touch phone is super sensitive so I kept having to re-add my prices 6 times until finally we just opened up one at the store (sorry Frys). After that I still had issues with calculators and rushing and would say our trip totalled 2 pushing 3 hours. I missed a lot of things on my list and knew before we hit the register that I exceeded my preset budget, we began emptying out the cart. I was getting out my clipped coupons and shopping card watching in horror as the items were scanned and tallied. I handed over my coupons and the heard the clerk say that they don't take competitor coupons anymore and tried to avoid showing my crushed panic face as I took them back. After all was scanned and bagged, I still exceeded my budget but for savings, I met and surpassed my $20 goal! I saved a total of $64.99 - $10 in coupons and $54.99 in shopping card savings. After this trip we went home and ate as we were all cranky and hungry. I feel this trip helped me better understand how to organize and what coupons to take. I am excited for my next grocery trip.
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1 comment:

  1. Hey that is awesome you are definetely super shopper.

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