Today I am thankful. Thankful for the many blessings in our life. Thankful for a working A/C (earlier this week it broke and we spent 12 hours without it). And right now, most of all I am thankful for our next door neighbors and their kids who are the same ages as my kids and have become BFFs to my three. Right now my kids are all next door playing happily and here I am with some unexpected but most welcome free time and nary a sound in the house. Can we all just take a moment for a collective "Ah!"
Nice ha?
So it seems I some time to divulge in a topic that I have become increasingly familiar in the past few months, couponing. I've tried a few times to work with coupons. And each time, it was a waste of time. I just didn't see how any savings could come from using them. Why save $0.50 of two higher priced name brand items when I could buy two generic brand items for less than the price of the two name brands minus the coupon? It just didn't make sense and the more I tried the more frustrated I got.
Then a few years ago I met through the Mommy Madness campaign my friend Stephanie. She is a couponer, a good one too. She is now even on our christian radio station, known as the Texas Money Mom. She recommended a site called The Grocery Game. Its good, but it was a paid thing and still I really wasn't seeing results.
Then a breakthrough! I am a member of a mom's group here and in our forum someone posted a link to a girl who offers couponing classes right here in The Woodlands. This girl has a great blog which I'll list at the bottom of this post. I started reading and then did searches for other blogs like hers and FINALLY it made sense!
Now I can use coupons, properly. But sadly I think I jumped on the wagon a bit late. There is a show on TLC that I won't even name because it angers me and it has shown what can happen when people grossly abuse the system. As a result, stores are cracking down on coupons as well as the manufacturers that produce them. I was only three weeks into my "training" when Kroger announced that they would no longer double or triple coupons in the state of Texas at all! Bummer. I don't think I'll ever have those amazing stats like $1000 worth of groceries for $.05 or anything even close to that but I can say that we have seen some major savings and shopping for us will never be the same.
So here are a few breakdowns of the stores I shop at and how to save at them.
Kroger
Kroger tends to be our last minute default because it is the closest (by a lot) grocery store us. I'm working to minimize our total amount spent there because I know up front that it is probably not the best deal. You still can get good deals at Kroger but it does take some planning. The best time to buy is when they are having their Mega Events. That usually involves something like "buy 10, get $5.00" although even those are becoming more skimpy. Their last Mega Event was buy ten, get $3.00. Anyway, like the name suggests buy 10 participating items (these will be marked in the store) and you receive $.50 off of each item at the register. Pair those discounts with manufacturer coupons to get the best savings.
The nice thing about Kroger is the gas discount. If you have a Kroger (or Albertsons) in your area then you are familiar with the 10 cents off discount for every $100 spent, 20 cents for $200, etc. Well if you did the math on that you would realize that you would have to spend a fortune to earn those discounts. What I didn't realize is that those discounts are for the retail value. So if you went in and bought $10 worth of items and coupons that reduced your final total by $5.00. You would still get credit for the $10. With some serious planning you can get cheap groceries AND cheap gas. May and June were our best months for both but as mentioned, they are cracking down on coupons and they deals are becoming more skimpy.
Randall's
Randall's always seems to have the highest prices on groceries to me. I look at their circulars and sometimes I wonder why someone would put some of their items in print. But, Randall's is also one of the places where I have a savings average of over 80%...regularly. So obviously its not all bad. Again, you have know exactly what the deals are and go in for ONLY those items to make it worthwhile. I was there Monday and spent $20 on $100 worth of groceries. We got a little bit of everything so I was pretty happy. A few things to note about Randall's and coupons. Randall's does double coupons up to 50 cents and triples coupons up to 35 cents. BUT, they will only double or triple one each kind. So if you have four 50 cent coupons for Cheerios (pretty common) and you present all four coupons at checkout, only one of them will be doubled. This means it takes a little more planning and execution if you want to double all of them. Unfortunately that means that on occasion you will need to do more than one transaction to get the full discounts on certain items. I've really only done that once and it was for an item that with the doubled coupon ended up free. I try not to pass up free if at all possible. In those kinds of cases, go early so there is no line!
Like Kroger, Randall's offers the same gas discounts and works the same way. After spending 20 bucks on Monday, my sweet checkout lady circled my new 10 cent discount on gas because the total retail value of my purchase was over $100. Cheap groceries and cheap gas...works for me!
Target
Target is one of those stores I really did not think of as a money saving store. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Target but there was a major problem! Every time and I do mean every time I would go into Target I would spend no less that $60. Go in for detergent, spend $60. Dog food, $60. Toothpaste, $60. Tell me, am I the only one that happened to?
Now I rarely spend over $20 at Target regardless of what I am buying. In June I bought NINE tubes of John Freida shampoo and conditioner...the good stuff too! Hair Repair and Awakening. I paid ZERO dollars and earned $15 in Target gift cards because you got a $5 gift card with the purchase of 3 John Freida hair are items. See what I mean? How is this possible? Well I'll tell you! Target has their own coupons that you can print right from their website. The wonderful thing about Target is that you can use their Target specific coupons AND a manufacturing coupon together! Then if you find a Target coupon and a manufacturer coupon on something that is on sale you save a ton! I loved shopping there before and I really love shopping there now! Also, one little known fact about Target is they price match just like Walmart. This is something I actually haven't done there because well, I haven't had to. Their prices overall are really pretty good.
Walmart
For years we would do "the Walmart run". We would load up the family and grab a cart (or two) and stock up on everything we needed for the month and pay hundreds of dollars for it. Walmart is presents itself as being the cheapest place to shop and for the most part we believed that so that's where we did most of our shopping. Now I know better! One thing I've had to get good at is learning what would be considered a "good price" for each...and...every...single...thing...I...buy. Now that I have a grasp on what those good prices are I can walk through the aisles of Walmart and know that they are not the cheapest place to shop. If anything for some (if not most) items are much more expensive. Makes sense though. For the cheap items they do have they have to make up for it somewhere! So like any store, the savings come with planning.
Walmart is famous for price matching. I used to be in the mindset of price matching being kind of a nuisance. Fumbling through papers to get your price match, holding up the line, etc. Then I tried it. Now I price match at Walmart. For the most part I only shop there for items that I can get really cheap (like under $1, or free). It is actually pretty rare for us to go there now which is great! Honestly I think it is in our best interest to spend as little time as possible in Walmart! We still try to maximize our savings and try to go only when we have a pretty good list (and the coupons to match).
CVS & Walgreens
I used think people who shopped at CVS (and Walgreens) for anything other than prescriptions were insane. Their prices were just waaaaay to high. If you don't shop correctly, bank on it...it will be too high!
The running theme in couponing is planning and when shopping at these stores it is extremely important! The key to big saving here is to combine the sales with coupons and the coupons that print at the register. At CVS those are called Extra Care Bucks (ECBs) and at Walgreens they are called Register Rewards (RR).
When shopping at these stores it also necessary to do multiple transactions. This is called rolling your rewards. It took me a little while to grasp the concept but once in practice it makes sense. Say an item is $3.00 and it has a register reward of $2.00. At checkout you present your coupons (because why would you buy it without one) and pay $3.00 (minus the coupon, say $1.00) You'll either get a code on your receipt (at CVS) or a printed coupon (at Walgreens that has a value of $2.00. That $2.00 can be used to purchase absolutely anything in the store, but your subtotal cannot be below $2.00. Then you find another item for $3.00 (it can be another of the same or something else that also has a register reward, etc)...and you have a $1.00 coupon. You present your $1.00 coupon and your $2.00 register reward and your new total is 0.00. You then have two items for less than half the price. Make sense?
Like I said, it takes practice to get used to it. One thing to note though is for Walgreens you cannot have more coupons than items. So for the scenario above you would have to have one other item. These are called fillers and you would usually pick something like gum, jello, etc...something small and only a few cents. Because of this I shop less at Walgreens than CVS and I will only use coupons that have a substantial value. It is pointless to use a RR with a 50 cent coupon on one item when you have to find something (usually costing 25-50 cents) as a filler to comply with the coupon policy. That being said, I have seen a few exceptions when using Walgreen's store coupons. For some reason those tend to be OK when pairing with a manufacturer coupon.
Really a lot of trial and error.
H-E-B
I have a love/hate going on with H-E-B right now. For the most part they have got really good prices and they are definitely a great place to shop if you don't have coupons on you. They post their own store and manufacturer coupons on several items around the store so you can still save. I like that they will post a comparison price to Kroger on some items to show that they are cheaper. It makes it easier on me when trying to memorize which store regularly has the best price on any one item! With H-E-B their coupons have levels of sorts. There are M, B, & S. If it is an "M" coupon you can use that coupon or your own but not both.
I had one of those moments that reminded me of a scene out of The Wedding Singer a few months back. I went and grabbed a bunch of items that had those pretty yellow coupons that I had planned to pair with my own coupons only realize that I couldn't do it, paying literally double what I thought I was going to pay. After the explanation of M, B, and S coupons all that kept playing in my head was "That would have been useful information, YESTERDAY!"
A little wiser I now know that you can only pair manufacturer coupons with B or S coupons at H-E-B. Remember that! If by chance you come across those elusive B or S coupons you have the potential to save a lot! Last month I paid $17.82 for twelve boxes of cereal (Cheerios of all flavors, Lucky Charms, etc) and twelve boxes of Betty Crocker fruit snacks (roll ups, gushers, etc). That's an average of 74 cents per item. I've come to the conclusion that if you wait long enough you should never have to pay more than that for any box of cereal...and the good kind too!
That pretty much covers the major stores. I'll break down in another post other key necessities and strategies when in comes to collecting coupons. I'll also tell you what to do with the ones you don't need or use...send them to the troops!
In the meantime, because who knows how long it will be before I get another quiet afternoon, here are some of my favorite places in the world wide web that regularly list great deals and where to find them!
Blogs
My Litter (she is located here in The Woodlands)
Faithful Provisions (Florida I think)
Totally Target
Wild For Wags
Wild For CVS
I Heart The Mart
Couponing to Disney
Printables
*set your printer to print in grayscale to save on ink
Coupons.com
Campbell's Kitchen
Target
Kellogg's
That's a good start!
Time to get the kids! Have a great weekend!
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