Time to Shop

Okay, today is the big day, first big time coupon expenditure happening.

How does one go about planning a shopping trip utilizing coupons you ask? Good question… 

Here’s the play by play on my first attempt:

First, I made sure all my coupons were input and NOT expired. Got out my handy dandy spreadsheet, sorted my items alphabetically, made columns for the Albertson’s and Target prices, and printed out my spreadsheet.  Then I jumped in the car and hit up Albertson’s, my number 1 go to store since it’s about a ¼ mile from the house. 

As I entered the store with my pen and paper in hand, I grabbed a basket to tote along with me so the grocery store people didn’t think I was trying to pilfer soap and other items during my hour+ long trip. No doubt it was quite the sight, as I stared pensively at the items on the shelves and shuffled through sheets of paper trying to locate an item on that never-ending spreadsheet. I started from the right side of the store and slowly weaved my way up and down the aisles noting anything that was on sale at Albertson’s, a long and arduous process to say the least.

Once I was satisfied that I had hit as many items as possible, almost 50+ items, I returned to my vehicle to hit up Target. My plan at Target was to get prices for all items I had found at Albertson’s; plus anymore that I was able to easily locate or were not available at Albertson’s.  I did the same aforementioned method of carrying an empty basket… which I will say, is almost shocking that I managed to  walk out of either store without putting SOMETHING in that basket, so un-shop-aholic of me…  it must be something in the coupons.  

After a quick stop at the Starbuck’s in Target for a shaken iced tea lemonade and a rice-krispy treat (which are absolutely delicious by the way) I was on my way home to input my store prices.

I will include that Ralph’s was also on my list of stores to price shop… however, I wasn’t in the store for more than 5 minutes. I checked a few quick items against my Albertson’s store prices, and the prices were outrageous! The sale prices at Ralph’s were equal to the normal retail price at Albertson’s. Now, I realize that this may be a biased opinion, since I was under-feed from extensive shopping hours (ironic since I was in grocery stores) and my feet and brain hurt, but I wasn’t in the mood to do a super market sweep of Ralph’s and find those few hidden deals that I’m sure were lurking around somewhere. Also, the isles were really narrow… not really into that.

Anyways… Back to the task at hand… The spreadsheet, once saved for archiving coupons, has been transformed to include various store prices and formulas to calculate some serious savings. Now they say the devil is in the details… so I’m ALL over the details here.

First, I input store prices. Second, I filtered based on items I had been able to price, and then determined which store, Target or Albertson’s , had the better price. I also made a column for this so it would be easier to search and filter at shopping time, aptly titled ‘Purchase From’, which I then color coded… cause I’m OCD like that. Third, I made a column for what I would expect to pay, titled ‘Price Out the Door’,  this included the unit price less the coupon value, times the number of items I was going to purchase (based on how many coupons I had on hand and terms of the coupon). This was a good place to check the specific terms of the coupons, some of which require you buy a certain type of an item, or size, or qty, and some have limits, such as ‘only 4 of the same coupon’.  

Here’s what it all looks like, Purple = Albertson’s, Green = Target:

I have limited time tonight, so I have chosen to only hit up Target. Now comes the conundrum of ‘how do I get ALL these coupons into the store, in an organized fashion, and know what it is I am supposed to buy?’ Well… I know you’ve all seen my ziploc bag full of coupons, but that isn’t going to work for a large mission like this. So, I picked up a handy little binder and some baseball card holders, and went to work stacking, counting, and organizing my coupons into the binder.  On top of each stack of coupons I put a sticky note with the number of items to buy written on it; this way I wasn’t counting out coupons in the store trying to decipher how many I planned on buying. And I was in a serious race against time… it was 9 o’clock as I sat on the couch admiring my new binder full of savings!!, and Target closed at 10, time to get a move on.

My Coupon Binder

After an hour or so of meticulous number crunching and coupon pulling and organizing, here is my guestimate for the evening:

21 different types of items, 78 items, 73 coupons, $140 bucks

This seems a bit ambitious, and the ‘Price Out the Door’ is a little on the high side, not to mention the sheer number of items I’ll be taking home… so we’ll see how it goes.

Check back tomorrow for a recap of my first coupon-induced shopping spree… May the savings be with you friends.

To Use or Not to Use...

So I’m getting into my third week of this little coupon extravaganza… I typically pickup papers on Sundays, clip on Mondays, and organize/input on Tuesdays. I think I’m settling into a pretty decent grove; I don’t feel overwhelmed, thanks to my handy dandy spreadsheet, I’m not spending hours on end, maybe about 2-3 hrs a week, and I’m still super pumped about the whole thing and my potential savings.

But… I know what you’re thinking, it’s real cute that I’ve been able to collect soo many coupons, but when I am going to get out there and save some moola!! I know I know…. It’s time.

Coincidentally, the other half of my household, the cats, are out of food.



Stella and Harper await Breakfast service



So I grab my ‘Purina’, buy two get a $1 off coupon, and hit up Albertson’s.  I zip through the self check-out line, scan my items, scan my coupon, and I’m outta there in under 5 minutes! My first coupon use was flawless, except for one minor detail; I basically saved no money… Two bags of cat food came out to about $13 bucks; I got $1 off, which left me with a total of $12 and 12 lbs. of cat food.  This is less than 10% savings… definitely NOT how the real couponers do it.

I must hone my task.

Until next time savers...

Couponing with Friends

I’ve been spreading the word at work about my new couponing adventure… not your typical water cooler talk but it works… no pun intended :). I was sharing a recent story about my quarrels with the newspaper stands: the multiple empty stands I encountered along the way (which happens when you don’t pick up a paper until 10pm), the difficulty in locating $6 in quarters, the stand that refused to return/stole my quarters, not even a serious shake or roundhouse will help you out here… I’ve tried.  Anyways, I come to find out that one of my friend’s at work brings his L.A. Times in every Monday to recycle it… PERFECT opportunity to get some extra coupons!!  So I casually bring this up to him, a.k.a. bombard him in the hall the first chance I got… whateves , and he tells me that he occasionally clips some of the coupons, but that he will definitely bring me his extra coupon booklets… MAJOR SCORE my friends!!!

Here is a picture of the major coupon stash I got from my friend T:

After my second coupon sweep, and a generous donation from a friend, I have a total of 290 coupons… I like it!!!

P.S. The ‘Extreme Couponing’ premiere is tomorrow night on TLC so make sure to watch and see how good these ladies are at saving serious CASHH!!  :)  Happy viewing….

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!!

It's that time again!! Got to go round up my coupons.... this time, instead of running around trying to wrestle with newspaper stands and being jipped out of multiple dollars in quarters, I went to the local liquor store.

I also decided to mix business with pleasure and hit up one of my families favorite places to eat, California Pizza Kitchen (CPK, for all that know).

4 newspapers and a pizza.

Coupon Chaos

I did a pretty stellar job on my first coupon clipping round... but now I have to figure out how I plan to organize my loot.

Many extreme couponers have a binder or box method to maintain their coupons. The binder keeps the coupons in book like format, complete with a table of contents, using the plastic thingies kids put their baseball cards in. This sounds like an easy way to view your coupons and allows for quick pulling at the register. Some go with 'a large box with a bazillion coupons in it method'.

Here is a rather extreme look at the binder method:

Now, this is a money saving excursion for me, so I don't want to put any money into making a book and buying baseball card holders until I get really serious and start saving some serious cash. So I am going to make a hybrid of these two ideas.

Being part OCD and part all over the place, I think a mix of the above will definitely work for me.

After 4 years in the business world, I am an Excel wizz! So this was an obvious and easy way to organize my coupons. The OCD side of me loves everything about spreadsheets; so I got to thinking about what kind of pertinent information needs to be in my spreadsheet. The biggies were Brand, Item, Coupon, Expiration Date, and Number of Coupons.

Here's what I came up with:

This spreadsheet allows me to sort by brand or product when I have new coupons to enter, and it also helps me to check manufacturing coupons against store coupons for double the savings! This is my first input so I am still lacking all of the details I will eventually need, but I feel like this is a good jumping off point. I use a macro in Excel to tell me when I have coupons that are about to expire, they are pictured in yellow above. I also have a comments section, in case there are certain terms that apply to a coupon, like only 4 of a like coupon, a certain sized can, or a buy one get one free type deal. (Everyone loves a good BOGO) Once I finish inputting the coupons, I sort them into like coupons and throw them in a big Ziploc bag.

And 'Viola'... a semi-organized coupon tracking hybrid.

Clippin' Time

My first newspaper sweep went very well, I got 4 newspapers total.

I noticed that my local newspaper has way less coupons than the big 'Los Angeles Times' paper. So I save all my quarters for the Times, and wait for my freebie local paper to hit the driveway. The Times has the Procter and Gamble circular and the Smart Source circular, both have tons of savings every week.


Here are my clippings from round 1:

Not too shabby if I do say so myself!!  :)

1st Newspaper Roundup

First newspaper roundup happening today... I have to admit, I'm kinda excited. We even received a local paper today, not sure if that is a mistake on the paper boys part, but it's a welcome surprise! I used this opportunity to look through what coupons the circulars have this week and which, if any, I would be clipping. This way I could figure out how many additional papers I wanted to buy. This circular had tons of good stuff like toilet paper, pasta sauce, body wash, laundry detergent, etc. ; so I knew this would be a good week to get my coupon stash going!

I've got my quarters ready for the other papers I plan to buy, now I just have to hit up some newspaper stands.

How many newspapers to buy you ask? Well... from my perusing of coupon 101 sites, a good rule of thumb is 1 newspaper per household member. There are obviously exceptions to this rule such as: you know the circular has coupons you want and you want them in plenty, you keep a stockpile of items (more to come on this), or you are like me and want to have more than 1 jar of pasta sauce on hand.

I am a family of 1, with two cats. So technically that is 3 persons, right....? Either way... I typically buy 3-4 papers, plus the local paper that gets delivered. I figure spending 6 bucks to save a boat load should be worth it. But I guess we'll find out...  :)