Today I took my couponing skills for a test drive to my local Shaws supermarket. When we arrived at the store, Dylan and I went to pick out his bagel. He likes to chew on a bagel or a piece of fruit while we shop, so I always ask him when we get to the store which one he wants. He had just finished an apple before we left for the store, so I was not surprised that he wanted the bagel. Bagel in hand, we went about picking up the items on my list. As I had mentioned yesterday, I had not seen any matches between my coupons and items in the store flyer. I did know that two items, the diapers and the Wheat Thins were on sale at the store even though they were not advertised in the flyer. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the coffee filters that I had a coupon for were also on sale.
I did not use two of the coupons that I had brought with me. One was for trash bags, and even with the seventy five cent coupon doubled to a dollar and fifty cents, the Glad trash bags were still at least a dollar and change more than the store brand trash bags that I chose to buy instead. Perhaps they will go on sale at some point before the coupon expires. I also had a coupon for milk, but the milk was not on sale and the coupon was for a dollar off of two half gallons. Normally we do buy that much milk, but tomorrow we are going out of town again for about five days so I figured that it was best to save the milk coupon for later.
When I got to the check out counter, I was nervous. It had been a long time since I had used a coupon, and although I only had about ten or eleven things in my cart, I did not want the person behind me to be rolling their eyes when I took out the stack of coupons for the cashier to scan. My Shaws card saved me about eight dollars before any coupons were even scanned. The coupons saved me another eleven dollars, so when all was said and done I walked away with $42.11 worth of stuff for $23.25. That is a savings of 45 percent. The biggest “score” of today’s shopping trip was a package of 26 Huggies Little Movers diapers. They are normally $11.50, and they were on sale for $9.99. I was able to use both coupons that I had, for a total of five dollars off of the sale price so the final price for the diapers was $4.99.
The preparation for the shopping trip itself took about an hour and the actual shopping took a little less than an hour. If couponing and shopping were a job, I would have “made” a little over nine dollars per hour which is about the same as many typical jobs in town. The best part is, it did not take away from the time that I spend being a mom. I did the preparation while my son was asleep and our trips to the grocery store are something that he enjoys because he gets to make people smile and there are many people and things to see. My initial foray into couponing is certainly not legendary or extreme, but I like it and I look forward to seeing what else I can accomplish with it.
Photo by calgrin on morguefile.com.