Count Me In!

I’ve joined the coupon craze! By the way, is this really a new craze or has our generation just finally gotten old enough to pay attention to things like clipping coupons? I‘m thinking it’s the latter, perhaps with the addition of the modern twists of virtual coupon clipping and electronic frequent shopper cards making it a bit more fun. Whatever the case, it‘s great and I’m convinced!

I used to think using coupons wasn’t worth the time it took. I never really paid attention to grocery sales (even though I always shopped clothing sales), and feel certain that I unknowingly left behind the freebie-halves of buy one-get one free deals on occasion. I even had some dumb idea that using coupons would just lead you to buy things you didn’t want and that resisting the lure of the coupon was somehow desirous. I had NO IDEA how much could be saved. Several blogging friends, in particular my friend Lindsay at Ole Miss Mom, got me interested. So, over the past couple of months, I’ve been going to online coupon sites like http://www.coupons.com/ and http://www.redplum.com/ and doing some virtual clipping and have been watching sales at the grocery and drug stores. And for the last two Sundays, I’ve bought the Washington Times for its coupon enclosures. I finally accumulated a good supply of coupons and organized them into a mini accordion folder, divided by product type. I read up on couponing tricks, like using a coupon for each of the products in a buy one-get one free deal, stocking up when the price is right, and matching coupons with sales for serious savings.

Armed with my coupons and having scoured the store circulars and company coupon policies, I did three serious couponing trips last week: CVS, Babies R Us, and Safeway. At CVS, my total before coupons and Extra Care Bucks (ECBs), but already taking into account the sales, was $48-something. After, it was $5.99 and I received $7 in ECBs to use next time! Pretty good, huh? I even made $1.01 on one product because I had a $2 off coupon and it was being offered for $2.99 with $2 ECBs back! And I got two other products completely free!

Inspired by that trip, I hit Babies R Us. There, I took $15 right off the top of my total with coupons for diapers and detergent. That’s real money!

I then headed to Safeway for groceries, where it took me two hours to match up all my coupons with the sales to get the best possible deal. In DC, a long shopping trip is a real problem because the grocery store only gives shoppers 90 minutes of free parking in the underground deck. After that, the rate is $18/ hour! Obviously, that would eat into one’s coupon savings rather quickly. But it all turned out ok because the coupons took $28 off my total and I spoke to the assistant manager about the parking and he told me I could keep my garage receipt and they’d give me a credit on my order next time. So, as Jacob says when he finds a good deal, lunch is on my genius! :)

Better late than never, right? I can already tell that couponing is going to help us tremendously in being good stewards of our resources. And it’s so nice to have a way to help out in the budget realm, all while Andrew sits on my lap or in my shopping cart!