Coupon Crazy!

Dave and I have never really been "coupon clippers". We've used a few up until recently, but never enough to be giddy about. Don't get me wrong, we price compare and search out sales and so on. Organization was part of the problem, I'll admit. Then there is the time you spend cutting. Well, with all the crunch lately, we've started trying our hand at this craft to see if we could make it worth our time.

We researched a few websites that offered helpful tips and learned a few things that we didn't know before. Such as Krogers has clip less coupons you can have electronically added to your Kroger shopper's saving card, and that you can print up a 1 page summary of the ones you have on your card if you need to reference them. (Other stores do this as well.) We also learned that they do double and triple certain coupons, as long as they add up to no more than a dollar.

It turns out that you can walk out of Krogers for less than Walmart if you are careful about things. I had tried a few coupons at Walmart, and it was tedious, as the cashier had to shuffle back through all of the bags to make sure I actually bought what the coupons said. Then, if that wasn't enough, they sometimes lost them. I was about ready to give up when we learned all of that stuff about Kroger. So, I decided to give it all a try.

First of all, I actually organized my coupons so that they would be easier to find what I was looking for. To do that I took several legal sized envelopes and sealed them before cutting them in half. I kept one of them open and uncut, which became my actual coupon holder. Then I took all of the other ones that were cut in half, rotated them, and labelled them near the opening that had been cut into place (what used to be the middle of the envelope) with general sections of the store where similar items could be found. For example: refrigerated section, cereal isle, soup isle and so on. Then, after sorting my coupons, I place the corresponding coupons into their designated pocket and then filled the main envelope with all of the sections that I had created.

Once we got to the store it was rather easy to find what we were looking for. I didn't have to rifle through all of the coupons every time I needed to find a certain one, just the ones that applied to the section we were currently shopping in. That saved us a lot of time. Then we went to the check out. This was it. How well did we do? Our total would have been $128.93, but after the coupons, in store sales, and so on, we saved a whopping $50.79! That means we only had to pay $78.14 for all of that food. Not bad for amateurs eh? Not only that, but Krogers appears to have some kind of electronic system that keeps track of what coupons can in fact be used, so all that the checker has to do is scan them at the end. Hurray!!!! :) I'm giddy now.