First Shopping Trip w/Coupons!

Most of us have probably seen Extreme Couponing on TLC, but that is not what inspired me to cut coupons.

It's really shameful to admit, but my fiance and I rely on his parents to help us out with groceries for the moment since I'm unfortunately unemployed and my fiance Cam is underemployed. I hate having to burden his mom with our expenses and so I decided it was time to try to save as much money for her as humanly possible, and what way could I do that? Well, it's not just about couponing, but being mindful about which coupons we use.

Some people might think that just because they have a coupon for an item, that they should get it. If it's not an item you need or will use, despite having a super fantastic coupon, then you're not really saving anything. Before when I said it is partly about being mindful, not getting unnecessary items is part of that. However, to really get the savings, you have to keep in mind that you'll get more bang for your buck when you apply those coupons with items that are also on sale.

With that, today was the first shopping trip with the intent to save a lot. And boy, was I disappointed.
I had done a lot of research prior to the trip today, looking for all the sales, using the electronic Upromise coupons, and cutting paper coupons. My fiance and I really don't get that much each week--just enough to get by. Even then, our average grocery bill each week comes out to about $75. After having seen so many videos and reading several articles and blogs, I thought I could easily cut that number in half. When I got to the store, everything seemed so chaotic. I didn't have an organized binder with plastic slots filled with coupons. I had a couple dozen paper coupons piled into a small envelope. I often stood in an aisle, scrambling with the coupons and fighting them to go back in when I was trying to match PC's with store prices. And in the end, I only used three PC's.

The effort wasn't totally wasted though. The total came out to $98.18. Between using the store's rewards card, U coupons, and paper coupons, we saved $28.97 for a total of 30% savings. It seems kind of silly to be disappointed about cutting your bill by a third, with which I'd concur. I think I just got caught up with watching the professionals save an average of 70-85% off of their sum.

A couple of paper coupons I used for this transaction was:

Franks Buffalo sauce - $0.75 off
Dove soap - $2 off
Rinaldi pasta sauce - $0.50 off

I'm actually kind of proud of the Rinaldi purchase because it's originally $2.49 and I got it for only 25 cents! Since we have the rewards card, they offered it to us for $1.24 less than the original price, and with the manufacturer's coupon we'd get 50 cents off of that, but the store allows you to double coupons that are under a dollar, so that 50 cents turns into another dollar off.

All in all, I was not as thrilled with the total cost of this week, but still, 30% is still some great savings. It's just going to motivate me even more to save a bigger percentage on the next trip. Happy coupon clipping to you and see you on my next shopping trip.