Money, Money, Money

I have been watching Extreme Couponing on T.V. It is so crazy to watch them get so many items and pay little to nothing the only thing that I don't get is that they don't ever show them buying meat or produce it is more junk food than anything. Anyways I had a mission today to see if couponing really works or not and if it is worth your time to find the best deals and cut coupons. This trip was suppose to be a shopping trip just on using coupons and buying nothing else, to see if it really works. I have used coupons before but here and there and with my other groceries so it didn't really take that much off and my bill is always around $150 for 2 weeks and then I always have to go run to the store and pick up little things during those 2 weeks so I average about $400 a month and I need to learn to cut that in half or more if it is possible, that would be nice.

Anyways I only went to smith's for the experiment I didn't want to go all over to different grocery store's. I took along my kids and had them get the items that we were searching for of course they wanted this or that but I told them that if we don't have a coupon we are not buying it. I truly had to see if it works. It got a little frustrating when I had a coupon for a free item and they were out so it kind of messed up my goal I had in mind. Smith's was having there mega event sale where you had to purchase 10 item' s mix and match to get $5 off at the register so I had it all planned out to get 32 item's for under $10 but with item's out of stock I had to go another way and find cheap items to cover the 7 item's I was missing so I didn't use coupons on the campbell soup. Now that I think about it I should have just put 3 things back lol, but luckily I use cambells soups a lot in cooking. And I also needed milk and didn't have coupons for that either but I didn't want to go back to the store for that item later. Anyways we finally got everything we needed and went to the check out and started scanning our items it was so nerve racking watching the price climb and it finally hit $53 which That was defiantly not the number I wanted to pay. So i gave the cashier my smith's card and it was fun watching the numbers drop. It got down to $37 and now time for my lovely coupons and it dropped to $15 with a $5 smith coupon as well on top of the manufacture coupons. I Didn't hit my goal of $10 which I would have if I got those items that were out of stock, I had a couple of more coupons for free items that would have covered the 10 items you needed. or bought the milk. which were $2.33 each. But it was my first try with using that many coupons and getting that many things for $15 even the cash register guy said not bad you did pretty well. I then told him I didn't hit my goal but it was pretty good and he laughed. I think I did pretty well. Hopefully I can keep it up and save our family money and cut our grocery bill in half each month. And learn more rookie moves and not do it again lol.



If you can't tell I got 14 pasta's all for free 2 boxes of cereal for $ 1.50 2 bags of chips for $.98 2 Single's cheese for $1.58 the 2 cookie dough for $2.48 the Jello pudding sensation for $.99 and a rookie mistake which I realize now to cover 10 item's 7 can's of campbell soup $4.83 which would have knocked my price under $10 dollars if I would have just put back 3 item's to save me a little over $5 and of course the 2 gallon's of milk $4.66. But all in all I have never done that before and it was actually a rush. I think I am going to like this couponing stuff.