With baby #3 on the way and some more exciting news in the not-so-distant future, we need to cut back right now. After looking at our budget, we saw that we did the most unnecessary spending on food & clothing.
I’ve decided to start a weekly challenge for myself. I’m going to take $20 and some coupons to the grocery store each week & see what I can get. I’m not very good at couponing right now, like, at all, so my hope is that with practice I will start to get better and it will be fun to see the pile grow bigger over the weeks.
This week I went to Weis, our local supermarket. I printed a bunch of coupons, but none of them were great deals when I matched them up with the sales at the store except the $1 off Philadelphia cooking cream coupon I got off the internet. The store had the cooking cream on sale 2/$4, and I used 2 coupons since I bought 2 of them, so each one was $1. I was hoping the store would double the coupon & they would be free, but they only double coupons up to 99 cents, so no such luck.
They were also having a sale where if you bought $12 worth of Heinz/Ore-Ida products, you would get a coupon for $3 off your next purchase at the register.
So I broke it into 2 separate transactions and bought the 2 bottles of ketchup, hash browns, french fries, and pasta sauce first for a total of $12.98. Then the registered printed me a $3 off coupon, plus an extra $1 off coupon I wasn’t expecting.
I used those to buy the rest of the stuff & my second total was $7.76.
So this week for $20.74 I bought
2 bottles of ketchup
1 bag of frozen hash browns
1 bag of frozen french fries
1 jar of pasta sauce
1 bottle of apple juice
1 64oz Snapple
1 box of oatmeal cream pies
2 Philly cooking cremes
1 bag of baby carrots
and 1 grapefruit
Without coupons & my store card, the total would have been 31.34, so I saved $10.60 this time, which is about 1/3 of the order.
Eh.
I’m no Extreme Couponer, but as my good friend Mr.Steve likes to say, “It’s better than a stick in the eye.”
*Update: Here are all of my couponing adventures!
good job! i have been couponing since march after going to a class and i love it! it’s a like a game every week. i bet you can find a free class to go to in your area and a blog or two to follow for the good deals. good luck!
wow, that is totally a challenge – I think for $20, I’d come out with like a container of gourmet nuts and a latte I bought myself at Starbucks in the grocery store. Ha. Kudos to you!!!
Last time I was at Amelia’s they had Philly cooking cream. We always go there for some of our groceries. Cereal is one thing they have for really good prices.