An Apology and Adventures in Couponing

Heh, it's been 12 days. Sorry, guys! I've had a hard time coming up with new things to post so all I can do is be sporadic. Poop.

Today, I challenged myself to try Walgreens out. I generally stick to one of four places to buy household items: Publix, Kroger, Wal-Mart, and Target. Jamie likes to joke that I'm *always* at Target; not true, not true! I'm there at least once a week, though. I do love Starbucks Iced Lattes! I avoid Wal-Mart if I can since they have a horrible reputation for employee treatment, but they do have some great bargains, I will admit. Kroger and Publix are obvious because they are grocery stores and very close to my house. Wags, though, is not one of my normal stops, but I wanted to give it a shot.

This week, Wags had a deal where you get $6 in Register Rewards (RRs; basically a coupon for that much off your next purchase) WYB six Dove items (hair care, deodorant, soap), which are also 25% off. They also had 100-ct. packs of Splenda 2/$7, Kleenex 89 cents a box, etc. Here is what I got:

1st transaction
2 Dove conditioners @ $3.74 each
2 Dove shampoos @ $3.74 each
2 Dove deodorants @ $3.59 each
1 pack of Scunci hair elastics @ $2
= $24.14
- 7.00 coupons
= $19.07 after 8% tax

I saved a total of $15.39 after coupons and advertised savings. Additionally, I got $6 in RRs for the Dove products and $2 in RRs for the hair elastics. I turned around and used those on my next transaction:

2nd transaction
4 Splenda 100-ct packs @ $3.50 each
3 Kleenex 110-ct. boxes @ $1.29 each
= $17.87
- 7.20 coupons
- 8.00 RRs
= $4.00 after 8% tax

I saved a total of 20.76 after coupons and advertised savings. In total, I spent $23.07 and saved $41.15. I still feel like I could have done better, but holy smokes! I saved almost twice what I actually spent.

I did the same thing at Publix next. The savings weren't quite as good, but Cheerios were a BOGO deal this week and so, after coupons, I got 8 boxes of Cheerios (Multi-Grain, Frosted, & Honey Nut) for $11, which is about $1.38 a box for cereal that is normally upwards of $4. I also got two large bottles of EVOO (32 oz. each) as a BOGO, which made $12 bottles of EVOO only $6. That deal would have been sweeter had I gotten the coupons to go with it, but, alas, they wouldn't print. Publix also had 8-packs of Gatorade for $5 and then a $2 coupon stuck to each pack so I paid $3 for 8 bottles of Gatorade, which is about 38 cents a bottle. I also got two free reuseable bags for buying General Mills products. I love it!

I could go through each ad and tell you what's on sale that seems interesting, but I read so many blogs that have posts like that and I worry that I would just be repeating information that you could easily find yourself.

Want to save money like I just did? Here are my quick tips!

1) Subscribe to the Sunday paper. I pay about $7 a month to get the Sunday paper delivered, which saves me time and money. If I really want more coupons, I'll buy a second one the next day, but generally I get two sets anyway, one from my paper and one from my mother-in-law's paper.
2) Clip coupons. Don't clip every single one; just cut out the ones for things you already use.
3) File the coupons you don't clip for later. I keep each Sunday's inserts in an accordion folder. If I see something on sale that I don't have a coupon for in my binder, I will go back through the inserts to find one that I can use.
4) Organize your coupons. I use a zippered binder with baseball card pages. Each pocket holds a different coupon, folded where I can see the item, the expiration date, and the amount. This saves me so much time! I was using a purse-size accordion folder and I spent more time going through coupons than grocery shopping.
5) Shop where the deals are. If Publix has more items I need on sale than Kroger, I go to Publix. If I need a stash of birthday gifts for kids, I go to Target and stock up when they have toys and other stuff on sale.
6) Supplement Sunday coupon inserts with online coupons. I subscribe to Cellfire, which allow me to load coupons on to my cell phone or my Kroger Plus card. Kroger's website had a page of coupons you can print. Target has a page of grocery coupons you can print. I subscribe to newsletters and other such emails for products I buy a lot so I can get coupons in my email.

That is all for now. I'm taking suggestions for future posts! Happy Couponing!