So you want to save some money?...a tutorial on coupons

<<------- That's my receipt Zander is holding!

Sit down, get comfy. You may even want to grab a snack, cause this is a tad lengthy! In response to a question about my previous post, I will share what I know about saving money at the grocery store. Sweetktea wrote:

"I wanna know how in the world you saved all that money on your groceries!!!!!"

Way back I wrote this post I LOVE my coupons ... about ways to cut down on the grocery bill. (Actually it was almost a year ago today that I wrote it. Anyone else think that is weird?) In that post, there is a link to a website called the Grocery Game.

For about 6 months after Hayden was born my neighbor Anne and I would faithfully clip coupons, get our list from the Grocery Game, then trek down to Alberson's and watch our hard work pay off. After a while of doing the grocery game we kinda got the hang of it, so now it's pretty easy to figure out how to out-smart the stores!

Here's the basic idea: The people at the Grocery Game study the grocery sales cycles, so they can determine which sales are the "rock bottom" prices and which ones are the "phantom sales" designed for you to think you are getting a really good deal when you really are not. An example of a phantom sale is when Safeway puts their cereal buy one get one free. Sure sounds like a deal until you realize they are charging $6.95 per box to begin with. (I can get cereals regular priced for $2.50-3.50 at other stores.)

The folks at the Grocery Game also compile a list of all the coupons that are printed in the Sunday paper as well as the coupons from the FoodDay (ours comes on Tuesday). Then they match the coupons up with the "rock bottom" sale prices so you get the absolute best price for that item. For a small monthly fee, you just print out the list, mark off what you are going to buy, pull those coupons and jet off to the store.

Here's the deal though...You must clip, clip, clip and sort your coupons. For a while to maximize my savings, I was clipping from 2 newspapers (which is a common practice of grocery gamers, especially if you have lots of mouths to feed.) The other side of this savings is acquiring a large enough "stock-pile" of grocery items that you a) don't run out in between sales cycles and b) aren't tempted to buy when the price isn't right (phantom sale). Buy only when the price is low, but buy more than you need, so you don't run out. Once you build up a big enough stock pile, you have more freedom to only shop for the sale items, which is when you see the biggest savings. I'm sure Anne is probably laughing at the thought of how big our stock-piles got!!! I am still using my shampoo stash I bought over 2 years ago when I got shampoo for 24 cents each! A lot of times you end up with FREE items. Which is great! Yesterday when I went shopping, I got eggs and hamburger patties for Free.

Although I am not a strict Grocery Gamer anymore, (and I have cut way down on which coupons I clip), I am still pretty good at combining sales with coupons. Even if you don't try out the GG, you can save a bundle just by only shopping the sales and using coupons for those sale items.

This week at Alberston's they are having a 10 for $15 sale. However, if you do buy 10 items from the sales flyer, you get save an additional $5 making your purchases 10 for $10. Among the list of items were selected General Mills cereal...well I happened to clip a coupon for $1 off 2 boxes of cereal, so now I am getting 10 for $9. Other things on the list were cake mixes. I also had a coupon for the mixes, so now I am getting 10 for $8.50. Frozen waffles were on the list and guess what? I had a coupon for those too. So I basically got 2 boxes of Kix cereal, 2 boxes of waffles, 4 boxes of cake mix and 2 pouches of cookie mix for $8...That's 80 cents per item. Do I need 4 boxes of cake mix right now? No, but in December when we have all our birthdays I won't have to pay full price. You do have to be real careful not to go crazy though. Most of the manufactured coupons are for processed foods (a little conspiracy theory about keeping Americans fat/unhealthy by getting them to eat too many processed foods. But that's another subject for another day!).

So that's kind of how it works. I also got lots of Buy One Get One Free items, so sitting in my freezer are 2 Foster Farms whole chickens, 2 pot roasts, 4 packages of ground turkey and a bunch of veggies.

Oh, another tip is to use the coupon to maximize the savings. For example, I had a coupon for 75 cents off 2 Tree Top Juice products. Now I could buy 2 large juice jugs, or I could buy 2 packages of juice boxes...Which do you think will cost less? The juice boxes, of course...they were already on sale 10 for $10 ($1 each) so with my coupon, I actually only paid 25 cents for a package of 4 juice boxes. Many of the 10 for $10 sales at Albertsons don't require that you purchase all 10 items in order to get the deal. You have to find out those details by reading the ad.

The best place to shop for sales, using coupons, in my opinion...is Albertson's. Not only will they take manufacturer's coupons, but they will also take up to 10 coupons from other grocery stores. When I went in yesterday I had a $10 off coupon from Safeway, plus their double coupons which is another $4 off, then I had a $5 off coupon from the Grocery Outlet. So before I even bothered with the other manufacturer's coupons I was already going to be saving $19.

Looking at the receipt, you can see that yesterday I spent $190.04 and bought 128 items. This averages out to $1.48 per item. I saved $9.95 with manufacturer's coupons, $25.48 with store coupons and $149.86 from Albertson's sales for a total savings of $185.29. The grocery clerk was impressed, doing the figures in his head "you saved about 50%." In the past when I was a hard-core coupon clipper, I saved between 60 and 70%.

So, now you know...are you sorry you asked...and do you think I'm a freak?