Fun & Games at the Grocery Store

So I've been dying to blog about my first official coupon grocery shopping excursion since last Tuesday when I went with my friend Susie. She's the coupon queen and was telling me about how much money she saves and how much stuff she gets for free. I kinda thought she was exaggerating... I mean, c'mon... she said she paid something like $76 for $296 worth of groceries just by using coupons from the Sunday paper. That's insane, right? Couldn't possibly be true... but call me the crazy one. Not only was she telling the truth (honestly, she doesn't have it in her to be so deceptive) but she showed me how much fun it was. You could seriously get high watching the cash register cha-ching backwards. I'm so giggly about it that my friends in Cali think I'm nuts.

OK, so here's the deal. You watch the sales at the grocery stores or their ads that come in the mail, and then match the coupons that come out in the Sunday paper with the same items. Now if you're lucky enough to have a grocery store that will double and triple coupons, you are the envy of all those in LOND (Land of the No Doubles). It's like having a strawberry the size of a small child. We're talking crack - a major high at an affordable price.

If you want the high to sustain itself, you buy Sunday papers in multiples. Susie buys between 3 and 6 newspapers every Saturday morning, I guess it's the early edition of the Sunday paper for people like us who don't spend money on Sundays. They're normally $1.75 each, but if you get them at Walmart or the Dollar Store, then they're a buck. And you have to get there early enough... sometime just after 10am before they're all gone. How many papers you buy is determined by the size of your family and how much it takes to keep them satiated. Susie immediately recycles the newspapers at the school while keeping the plastic insert containing the coupons. She's got this thing down, I tell ya, even to the point of saving the Earth.

Instead of cutting out the coupons and creating a filing nightmare for yourself, you keep them intact until you need them. Most importantly, each booklet has a name and a date in tiny print on the outside going up the spine. You might get a couple of SmartSource ones, Valassis or a P&G Saver all on the same date, so you throw these together in a file (or in my case, a pile). Coupons run about 3 months before they expire, so you keep them because you don't know when that item will go on sale.

OK, so far, if you're anything like the lady who checked us out on Tuesday night, you're thinking, "I just don't have the patience for this," and "blah, blah, blah." Am I right? I'm right. I know I'm right because I used to clip coupons and then get to the store and spend like 20 minutes trying to find the dang thing and then finally giving up with the realization that convenience has a price and it's the 32¢ I would have saved if I had found it. So it's not really worth the 32¢ but is it worth saving 50% off your entire bill? Uh, yeah... so stick with me, I'm almost to the good part.

Now, imagine that someone already looked up the ads and cross referenced the coupons and all you have to do is look at a list and pick which ones you want to take advantage of. Easy peasie, right? And because all the items are already on sale, then you're going to find the item quickly because grocery stores put up little flags of some sort to draw your attention to the bargain sitting on the shelf. You could probably have the patience for coupons if someone already did the paper work and because, admit it, cutting the coupon out is really fun -- it's the best part. Ask my kindergartner.

Now imagine that someone did that for all the grocery stores in your area. Now you get to see which stores have the better deals or the stuff that you want or need that week, and all you have to do is compare the lists someone already put together for you. The list shows original price, sale price, the coupon to use from what booklet and what date (see the date helps in finding the right coupon), additional specific grocery store sales (like getting $5 back for every 15 participating items that you buy), the price you will actually pay, and then the percentage that you save.

Here's a real life example from Tuesday night... Pillsbury Crescent Dinner Rollls have an original price of $1.39 and they went on sale for 99¢. There was a coupon in SmartSource for 50¢ off on 9/9. Now, if the coupon is doubled, then the item is free. Maybe you don't even buy this item normally, but if it's free... and you have little kids that could wrap little sausages up and eat pigs in a blanket for dinner... then all of a sudden you want 10. So buy 10 papers and get 10 coupons and get 10 for free. Technically, I don't think Kroger will let you get away with getting a free item of one kind more than once. At least, that's what the crabby lady on Tuesday said. So if you're bent on getting those 10, you might have to make 10 different transactions - ie. take stuff to your car and come right back in to do it again. And before you balk at that idea, what if you had 10 other kinds of free items that needed separate transactions? You'd do it... maybe not 10 times, but at least three. Or come back the next day and do it again... seriously, you'll get addicted to the feeling you get when your cart is full of stuff and your receipt goes from 3 digits to 2.

OK, now for the catch -- there really isn't one, but you're all waiting for it, so here... So far, you've spent $1 per newspaper and the fee it costs to join the website that did all the paper work for you. I'm doing a $1 trial for 4 weeks right now. If I decide to stay on, I will pay $10 for one store every 8 weeks with each additional store being $5. So if I want to do three stores, I'll pay $20 every 2 months or $10 per month just to get the lists. I'm thinking of doing 2 newspapers per week, so that's another $10 per month. That's $20 per month spent total.

On Tuesday, my bill rang up to $132 and change. I let the cashier scan everything in and then gave her my Kroger card and watched the show. And then I gave her my coupons and the show got even better. (This is the high I was telling you about... you almost need popcorn with butter and furikake and mochi crunch -- especially for Susie's stuff -- she bought $339 for $162) When the cashier finished, my total came to $65 and change. So in my very first week, I covered the $20 per month for three months. I think it will be worth it to stay with the website. Who wants to get cross-eyed doing all that work themselves?

One thing that my friend Betty brought up is "Do you have to go to more than one store?" This is assuming that I am trying to get every category of product in each trip. I'm not. This is a totally different way to shop. Let's say that toothbrushes are on sale with coupons and extra incentives, the works... so much so that you get them -- brand name toothbrushes -- for 23¢ each. You're going to buy more than one. You could buy enough to stockpile and have on hand for the entire year at that price, and then you don't buy toothbrushes again for a long time. Or maybe it's free, and this particular thing happens once every quarter... this is how Susie built up her emergency kits with medicines and her bathrooms are full of shampoos and deodorants that she got for free. And they are all brand name items. So to answer the question, "Yes." You might go to more than one store, but maybe not all in the same day. You might collapse with giddiness and get taken to the funny farm because it really is so much fun! And besides, if you save lots of money and keep getting that high, then you'll need another fix and going to another store gives you a change of scenery. You'll go willingly.

OK, I can't think of anything else to say at this point, other than the fact that I owe Susie an unlimited number of invites to come over and play Wii Bowling and a major Thank YOU! It's nice that I can be apprenticed like this because she tells me all her little tips in person... like making sure you grab a few of those free coupons that come out of the electronic machines in the aisles of the grocery store. You know, the ones that you always have to yell at your kids to keep them from playing with because they keep making the little slips of paper come out like magic (sensor activated). Now they can play with them and I get free coupons. Bonus!

Ask me anything you want to know that I left off and if you want to know the website, I'll tell you. I just didn't want to be taken for a salesperson in one of those MLM companies (been there, done that). Let me know what you think. I'm posting pictures for Susie's sake. They won't be very exciting, but maybe she'll read my first blog. It is a major tribute to her. I could have written about my family or my bolo headed husband (I like it, cheese) or the little one growing in my belly, but no. I wrote about my coupon queen and mentor, Susie Q.