I used to do the Grocery Game, but then I figured it was silly to spend money on a program that's supposed to save money, so now I do it all myself. On Wednesday when the new grocery ads come out I sit down with them and my coupon binder and make my shopping list. I have a pretty good idea of what's a great sale price for most items, so that helps a bunch.
This week I spent the bulk of my shopping money at Fry's. They are doing quadruple coupons (up to $0.25, so that coupon for $0.25 off is now worth $1.00) and they are accepting store coupons from other stores. That's a great thing! Today, I got a cart full of groceries and my total before sale prices and coupons was $121.40. What I actually paid was $43.26, so I had a savings of $78.14 after sales and coupons. That's 65%! For our family of four, I usually spend about $150 every two weeks. That includes everything - food for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, cleaning stuff and health and beauty stuff.
When something is cheap, I buy a bunch of it so it will last us until it goes on sale for super cheap again. This obviously requires lots of storage space. I'm pretty lucky in that I've got a really big pantry, a big laundry room where I've got an extra fridge and a freezer in the garage!
Here's what my pantry looks like:
It's big and I love it! I've got everything in here from food, extra health and beauty stuff (in the baskets) and big kitchen gadgets. It's pretty well organized (most of the time anyway!). I make sure to rotate my stuff when I go shopping, so I've never got old stuff hanging out in my pantry. FIFO - first in, first out.
I have a love/hate relationship with my coupon binder. I love it when I'm shopping and see my total going down on the register, but when it's time to clip the coupons and file it away, I hate it.My binder is pretty well trashed, so it's time for a new one. I'm thinking this time around I'll make it pretty with my scrapbook supplies.
The inside is filled with trading card and photo pages that came from Wal-Mart. The trading card pages are for the small coupons, the photo pages are for the enormous ones!
Want to learn more about shopping with coupons (and not have to subscribe to a paid service)? Check out Hot Coupon World. Tons of info there!
3 comments:
Wow. That's great. I used to do this and then we started going out alot. Well with this economy it's time to do it again. I used to come home with tons of free stuff & get lots of rebates. It was a lot of work but so much fun!!! Way to go! Feel free to visit my blog sometime @ cottonpickincute.blogspot.com
That's pretty cool! I wish I had a big pantry to store things I stock up on like that. Your storage looks great!
that's some impressive saving! good job! I used to love saving with coupons, but now I live in Italy where finding a single coupon is very rare! I try to make up for it by stocking up on sale stuff, but we have an apartment without so much space. boo hoo!!
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