Being out of work and having a limited income makes you rethink a lot of things in your life. Going out, taking vacations, buying “wants’ as opposed to “needs”…just to name a few.
One of the things that you still have to do, especially when you have children, is grocery shopping. Feeding a family of six on a tight budget is not an easy thing to do…but with a little bit of hard work and planning, cutting your grocery bill by 40, 50…even 90% can be done.
About 6 weeks ago my wife stumbled across a show called “Extreme Couponing”, a reality show focusing in on families that have taken bargain shopping to the next level. These are people that have taken couponing to almost a full time job and obsession. I have seen dozens of people save 90-99% on their grocery bills, saving as much as $1,500 in one shopping trip.
This intrigued me, since I am obsessed with finding the best deals and scouring the clearance racks at my favorite retailers. After watching just one episode, I was inspired to join the “extreme couponing” culture.
I quickly cane to realize that this would not be as easy as I thought. The first stumbling block is the couponing policies of our local grocery stores. If you watch carefully on “Extreme Couponing” the featured shoppers will use hundreds upon hundreds of coupons, doubling many of them for unbelievable savings.
In the Milwaukee area, the two biggest grocery stores are Pick n Save and Sentry, both with differing coupon policies. Pick n Save has a strict “double coupon” policy; only on Wednesdays and Saturdays, maximum 5 coupons doubled up to $1.00 and you must spend a minimum of $25 prior to the coupon savings. Sentry varies on their days for “double coupon” savings, but they big restriction is not accepting “internet” coupons (which I will get to in a little bit)
This has made the possibility of copying the 90-99% savings of “Extreme Couponing” very difficult, but it has not swayed me from my goal of saving the most money at the grocery store.
Much of the success is reliant on planning your shopping trip. This does not mean just having the list of the items I need to buy, it goes much deeper than that. Every week when the store fliers come out (either in the mail of the Sunday paper) I scan to see what kind of great in store sales there are. My favorites are the “Buy 4 of this item, get $$ off…or get something else for free” or even better are the “Buy 8 of this item and get them for $1.99 each”. But these are the best when you have coupons.
Collecting and organizing coupons is the most time consuming item, and the one that most people stay away from. I have heard from numerous people that think clipping coupons is a waste of time or will not save them anything. On any given Sunday, there will be anywhere between $100-$400 dollars on coupons available for you to use.
If you do not organize your coupons, then you could potentially be wasting your time. I learned of the binder method, separating your coupons into 8-12 (or more) different categories (I use baseball card sheets to organize mine), this way they are easy to track and grab quickly. This is by far the most time consuming aspect of “extreme couponing” when you are first starting out.
After you look over the store fliers and figure out which coupons you have to match those sales…that’s where the fun begins…Planning the shopping trip. I tend to try to do my shopping on the “double coupon” days, but this tends to take extra planning too.
Once again you have to know your store’s coupon policies (they may not always be clearly posted, go to the Customer Service counter to inquire) otherwise you run the risk of not getting the greatest discount. You also have to be diligent in watching the cashier and the register screen to make sure you are getting the store price and that the discounts and coupons are being applied properly.
***NOTE TO MY TV NEWS Friends…someone please do an investigative story on the accuracy of store registers when it comes to applying in store discounts and scanning coupons. You may be shocked by what you find***
Stick to your list…another vital component to maximizing your savings. Nothing could be worse than going in with a list of 10 items (all on sale) and walking out with 40 blowing your grocery budget.
Tomorrow…Part two….finding and collecting more coupons!
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