Have you ever been at the grocery store and noticed that there will be holes on the shelves here and there? One particular item will be completely gone, while nothing around it is noticeably diminished?
Apparently there is a whole sub-culture of deal-savvy shoppers out there who combine the VIC or MVP deals of the week with existing coupons, and the result is that some items are completely FREE. So next time you notice that hole on the shelf, you’ll know what happened.
I have a friend at work, we’ll call her Coupon Gal Pal, who has recently introduced me to this world. I’ve learned that Harris Teeter and Lowe’s Food always double (most) manufacturer coupons below $1. So if you see a coupon for $.75, it’s really a coupon for $1.50.
Today (Thursday) through Sunday, Harris Teeter is having Triple Coupons, so each coupon is now tripled in value. Combined with the weekly deals, there are a lot of items that are literally being given away. For the past week, I’ve been looking forward to experiencing my first coupon blitz.
First things first – i needed to accumulate some coupons. Coupon Gal Pal is the Keeper of the Coupons for a small group of coupon swappers, so she loaded me up with newspaper inserts to go through. Every day she brought in a new bag of coupons for me to peruse, and i clipped my heart away.
Next is organizing the coupons. I have a 3-ring binder that has a bunch of baseball card inserts to store the coupons. That way they are easy to spot, and they are sorted by category.
Next is creating the shopping list. This is a combination of planning your menu for the week and looking at the weekly deals to see what you should buy. As it turns out, for this week’s Triple Coupon bananza, i only have a few coupons that will result in free stuff. But i have quite a few $.75 coupons, which triples to $2.25 off of any item, so i’m excited.
The one thing i do not have for this, my inaurgural coupon trip, is a price book. A price book is just a list of good or normal prices for items you usually buy. This lets you know whether you’re getting a good deal or not once you add the coupon. I’ll create my price book over time, but basically today i was going in blind, not knowing whether some of the coupons i had were worth using or not.
I went at lunchtime and was able to score on most of the items i was looking for. I purchased $70 worth of groceries before the VIC card savings. The VIC discount took it down to $63. My out of pocket expense was $29, a 54% savings (off of the VIC price). Wow! Items i got free: colgate toothpaste, powerade, palmolive dish soap, lipton flavored rice, and lipton soup mix. See a complete list at the bottom of this post. For comparison, Coupon Gal Pal went to the grocery store at 6:30 am this morning to stock up, and she got $85 worth of groceries for $15, an 82% savings. (And she was slightly disappointed b/c she prefers to save 90%+ during triples.)
Coupon Gal Pal tells me that i should have a goal to always save at least 50% on my groceries. I think it is still going to take me awhile to get up to that kind of consistent savings, and i have to decide if this is worth my time and energy. I mean, it takes time to clip coupons and it takes energy get organized enough to know what the right deals are. Not to mention, you have to get up early in order to get the best deals, and i am not an early riser.
However, i’m pretty sure that with very little effort, i will never have to pay for toothpaste again.
Here’s the complete list of what i got today, listing the normal price and what i paid for it today. Everything on the list will be consumed, although it’s certainly not a complete grocery list for a week. I’m told it takes some time to accumulate enough coupons to effectively reduce your grocery bill for good. For example, i buy a lot of ground beef and milk, but i haven’t seen any coupons for those items yet. Maybe that stuff is such a staple that they don’t often give coupons? I’m not sure, i’m just a newbie at this. Anyway, it’s been fun learning about it.
- Betty Crocker Muffins normally $2.99, got it for $1.79
- Duncan Hines Brownies normally $2.05, got it for $1.00
- Bisquick normally $3.17, got it for $1.37
- Palmolive Dish Soap normally $3.98, got it for FREE
- Dole Pineapple Chunks normally $1.85, got it for $.68
- Lipton Soup Mix normally 1.79, got it for FREE
- Lipton Rice normally $1.55, got it for FREE
- Hellmann’s mayo normally $3.99, got it for $2.19
- Powerade 32oz normally $1.49, got it for FREE
- Crisco Canola Oil normally $3.79, got it for $1.54
- Gatorade Powder normally $4.09, got it for $3.09
- Colgate toothpaste normally $3.35, got it for FREE
- ACT mouthwash normally $4.99, got it for $2.29
- Special K waffles normally $3.49, got it for $1.24
- Pillsbury Mozzerella Bites normally $4.49, got it for $2.24
- Totino Pizza Rolls normally $4.49, got it for $3.79
- Pillsbury Crescent rolls normally $2.39, got it for $1.34