The good, the bad and the ugly of my 2-week coupon experiment

I am ruined.

I’ll never be able to pay full retail again.

This coupon thing has become my obsession.

Couple contributing factors, after delivering 30 cut-up hotdogs for snack to school (I have 10 more packages in my freezer), my teacher friend @CaroleAnne shared a secret with me.

And now, I will with you. GROCERY GAME.

It was as if the heavens parted and the angels sang. I was almost to the point to giving up on my goal of saving 30% on our grocery bill because of the amount of work involved with monitoring the websites, finding and cutting the coupons and keeping it all organized.

THIS GROCERYGAME site is so simple and comprehensive, it’s almost confusing. You just click the stores you want to monitor, and it spits out a list of what the current deals are. You click the ones you like and it gives you a printable summary of the coupons you need and your shopping list. Beautiful.

There is a fee for this convenience, but there’s a free trial of which I am currently enrolled.  And if you refer others, you get credit towards your subscription fee. (If you sign up, please, please use trista@mommyupgrade as your referrer in your profile. 😉 )

Let’s talk results:

WEEK ONE: May 22  27^th:

The good: I managed to save $118.86, exceeding my goal and saving 33.7%.

The bad: I definitely spent more than I wanted to this week, with a total $233.30 by shopping at Kroger, Target, CVS and Walgreens. It was a lot of work getting organized and I only had one of most of the coupons I was using. I am convinced that you do not realize the full benefit of stockpiling until you have one and you are no longer purchasing the stuff you need when it’s not on sale. I wasn’t discouraged, in fact, I was motivated to get organized. I pulled out a binder and sheet protectors to get my crap together.

The ugly: PAY ATTENTION to everything. The shelf in Walgreens was mislabeled and I accidentally overspent on a box of cereal. AND in a situation where I had a coupon for $1 off a .99 cent item, the checkout girl didn’t know how to handle it so she rang it up as a .49 cent coupon and hoped I wouldn’t notice. I did, of course when I was in the car with the Princess FINALLY buckled in, thinking that it total was too high and looked more closely. It only took 20 agonizing minutes with a manager to sort out a measly .50 cents. Yes, any normal person would have left instead of waiting that long but once the manager decided to show up to refund me, he took all my stuff from register to register with him and me following like a  lost puppy. In my haste to high-tail it out of there before my face exploded from the red shade it had become, I left him with my receipt. He chased me to my car with waving hand extending it, I presume in fear of me invoking their pledge to give you $5 or whatever your reward, if not presented with a receipt.

WEEK TWO: May 28^th – June 4

The good: I saved $175.83, exceeding my goal with a 49.7% savings. I bought steaks, shrimp, ice cream, bacon, tampons, 10 deodorants… all high-dollar stuff.

The bad: I spent $177.88 which is still more than I wanted to spend but we’re moving in the right direction!

The ugly: I am enrolled in the school of hard knocks for Walgreens couponing. I went to a different Walgreens (still embarrassed from the coupon fail of the previous store) and picked up some deodorant for the hubs. There was a coupon for buy one get one free (BOGO) AND you earned a $5 in-store coupon for purchasing four of them. Well, I had four BOGO coupons. The checkout employee was completely impressed with the savings that I had rung up, but when I asked if I had to buy 8 deodorants (because technically half were “free”) to get the $5 in-store coupon or just 4, it required a manager to answer. They were all very nice, and like I said, the employee was in awe of my 45% savings so far. The manager said that it should work with the four and if it didn’t, she’d override the computer and print it manually.

High from my success, I wanted another $5 in store coupon, (you are limited to one per transaction and I don’t have the nerve to ask for two separate transactions yet) so I drove to the original Walgreens. And that’s where it all unraveled again.

I asked at checkout if I could mix up the scents of the deodorant on special and it still qualify for the in-store coupon. SAME checkout girl who jipped me 50 cents… yes, she is sure. I check out, I pay with my freshly earned in-store coupon and waiting, waiting, no print out of my next in-store coupon.

She tells me to go wait at photo for the manager. Having learned from the last rodeo, I took everything with me so we wouldn’t have to run from register to register collecting all the pieces to solve this new problem.

The SAME manager as earlier in the week finally appears and I explain the scenario. He doesn’t even think the deodorant is on sale. I have to walk him to the shelf and show him. He then calls another employee over to research the sale in the flyer because now he suspects the shelf is mis-marked. It is not. The other employee finds the advertised promotion. I am growing more and more uncomfortable by the second. We go to another register to cancel the original transaction and ring up again. This time he tells me when I try to pay that you cannot use an in-store coupon with any other coupon. Which I am still not sure is accurate, but at this point, all I want is out of the store — yesterday. I pay and leave, embarrassed again and a new shade of purple after all the investigative trauma the manager has now put me through twice. I went straight to CVS and had a very educated check out experience with the employees there – and scored $9 in CVS bucks.

You may be shocked to learn that I did return to Walgreens later in the week – at a different shift time and spent $1.02 for an $8.52 bill.  I used my in-store coupons only. This Walgreens coupon policy requires more research online….

All in all, the week was a success but like an addict jonesing for their fix, I was highly disappointed that there were no coupons in the Sunday paper. Another lesson–learned in coupon wizardry: No coupons on holiday weekends. Luckily I discovered this prior to buying my three extra papers.

I also invested in some trading card pages for my notebook. I rationalized it as  easier to find your coupons when organized that way – besides the professionals on Extreme Couponing use them. Also scored these on a discount because Staples had them listed on the shelf for $2.99 and they rang up at $3.99, but they refunded me.

To further my pledge to not pay retail, I used my JoAnn’s and Michaels 40% off coupons to purchase the supplies I need for my upcoming Wilton class. Found a couple of good Groupons I couldn’t pass up, and just to put the cherry on top off my week, I redeemed my Singer coupon to upgrade from my hairball spitting 1990’s two-stitch monster to a big girl sewing machine for 62% of retail price.

God help me if there’s a BMW coupon in Sunday’s paper…