Success!

This week's shopping has been outstanding! With matching up coupons to sales, I have done extremely well this week.

Yesterday, I shopped at Walgreens, CVS, and Kmart. By combining all three receipts, this is what I paid:
Regular Price: $269.75
Sale Price: $164.27
Coupons Used: $97.64
Store Money: $48.50 (Register Rewards at Wags & ECB at CVS)
Subtotal: $18.13
Tax: $7.24
Grand Total Out of Pocket: $25.37

Using the regular price as my starting point, that's savings of over 90%!

But, the best part...I got $30 worth of Register Rewards, $17 worth of ECB, and a $5 off coupon for any purchase at Kmart of at least $5. In other words, I got $52 back for next time I shop! Not bad.

Today I made another Kmart trip. I didn't do quite as well, but for $20 out of pocket, I purchased:
5 boxes of Special K cereal
6 boxes of Ziploc bags
6 medium-sized Twist-n-Lock Ziploc containers
6 small Twist-n-Lock Ziploc containers
2 Healthy Choice microwave meals
2 Tylenol Arthritis (20 count)
3 Starbuck Frappacinos
2 cans Pringles
1 Glade candle tin
1 Glade candle refill
1 Cottonelle Bathroom Tissue (12 rolls)

For as much as I have hated shopping my entire life, I'm really enjoying shopping as long as there are coupons involved!

Don't you hate it...

...when you have a coupon that you had every intention of using, only to get home realizing you still had it in your pretty little coupon binder???

I did the Keebler deal at Jewel tonight, buying lots of cookies to donate to church. I also had the "save $2 on Milk when you buy cookies" coupon and was going to use it. Somehow, I missed it. I have no idea how. It was on my list. The coupon was paper clipped with all the others. But somehow, I came home without milk.

Hubs told me twice to just let it go, but I can't. I'm hoping that venting here will help.

Where has September gone?

I can't believe September is almost over. Where did it go?

I spent today working on our book-keeping. I haven't done our "official" financial records since April, so it is going to take a while to catch up. However, I'm excited to see how our expenses changed over the course of the summer with my increase in coupon usage. I think back to December and January when we were spending $500-$600 per month on groceries and shake my head! I keep reminding myself that we didn't have appliances back them, so there was limited cooking and stockpiling choices. I'm so glad I started a new hobby that saves money.

I was hoping that next week would be double coupons at Kmart, but it sounds like it is only the P&G coupons. Depending on what coupons are included, I may still stop in and see what (if any) deals I can snag. Many blogs are posting about the deals at Walgreens and CVS this week, so I am looking forward to those.

First Trip a Success

Last night was my first time shopping with the binder. It worked great! It's a tad on the large side, so it hangs off the edges of the shopping cart when open, but that was the only negative. It was great being able to flip through pages and see coupons, rather than having to pull them out of the box and finger through the entire stack. I need to spend some time this weekend refining a few things - section dividers, finishing filing, etc - but I hope to have the box fully retired by Monday.

Speaking of shopping - hubs and I did a Super Target run. Before coupons was $64, after was $29. I was expecting it to be a little lower than that, but we did pick up a few extras. On the way home, we stopped at Walgreens. Total oop was $3.02. We now have a three-wick Glade candle, another shower cleaner (being donated to church's garage sale), and some items for the Mom & Dad stash donation box.

Success all around last night!

Change in Tactics

I broke down. I just couldn't live with the box anymore. I bought a three-ring binder for my coupons. And, lots and lots and lots of baseball card holders. Spent way too much money, but I was bound and determined to fix my problem.

I think I'm going to go with a combination method. Since I get coupons from other sources (eBay, Coupon Clippers) I will always have clipped coupons. However, I am no longer going to cut the Sunday inserts and I going to use plastic page protectors to "file" them by date.

The neat thing (I think) is that I found a zippered binder that has two sets of rings. When the binder opens, there are 1.5" rings on each side, and they are off-set so the binder closes properly. My hope it that I can have my clipped coupons on one side, and the insert pages on the other side.

My one mistake was making the change mid-month. I should have waited until the 9/30 coupons expired, and then made the switch to the baseball card holders. I'm worried that while I need all the holders now, maybe I won't need that many once my process changes. But, I can live with that oops. Hopefully this system will be easier and I can stay on top of things.

Deal of the Week

My "Deal of the Week" happened at CVS. Renu contact solution was on sale for $7.99 with a $3.00 ECB, limit of two.

Purchased 2 @ $7.99 = $15.98
Used CVS ReadyFill $3 off $12 eyecare product coupon = minus $3
Used two IP coupons @ $2/1 = minus $4
Used one CVS register printout coupon @ $2/1 = minus $2

Total out of pocket: $6.98
Received $6 ECB
Net Result: $.98 for two or $.49 each!

That's a savings of 95% off the regular price of $8.99

Can't beat that! (unless, of course, you can get it for free!)