I do not spend hours POURING over newpapers. I don't pay people to clip my coupons for me. I don't load two carts to the brim and use hundreds of coupons to get everything for free and then let it sit in my house for years. I think people that do are sick.
Why in god's name would I want to have 87 bottles of bodywash stockpiled? It'll go stagnant before I could use it all. Or worse yet hordes of food I'll never eat. No. Sorry. Just no.
I intelligent coupon. I buy what I need within my means. Yes, that includes extra that I know I'll use in the future. And I always leave some for others.
Example:
Total savings: $41.09
Total after savings: $49.81
number of coupons: 2
Yeah. TWO.
Now disclaimer: This is not an ordinary shopping trip. This was an inbetween trip. Notice the lack of gallons of milk or eggs or anything "fresh". Those we buy as needed so they rarely end up in the huge trips. This was sheerly me going through the circular and finding things we use on sale.
Like body wash. Let's talk about body wash. I had one coupon. Granted I could have printed up more (I *heart* you coupons.com) but I only had the money for one. So let's break down how this works:
Original price: $2.69
Bonus card discount: -.20
Coupon: $.75 off
Doubled at: $1.50
Final price for body wash: $.99
YEAH
Now, I know I totally could have printed a bunch more coupons and gone hog wild, but why? I only need one. I have half a bottle left. And I'm working within limited means. See? INTELLIGENT couponing.
I also try to use in store deals to the best of my advantage. For instance nine items in that picture were free. NINE. FREE. God BLESS Tops meal deals! :) How they work, you buy a pack of chicken and you get fixins for free! Genius system and whoever thought it up deserves a medal. And equally what I love is that I can paw through the bin of chicken to find the smallest pack. There's only 2.5 people in my house that eat dinner, so why the hell do I need a $25 family pack for? I can get at LEAST three dinners out of that pack. The breakdown there is:
Cost of chicken: $17.68
Items I got for FREE with chicken: 2 liter root beer, Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, Bush's Baked Beans, Hunt's Tomato Sauce, Pepperidge Farm frozen Tuscany bread, Fresh Express bagged salad, 1 lb. thin spaghetti, 1 lb bag of mozerella cheese and 1 gallon of lime sherbert.
BRILLIANT SYSTEM!
My other coupon was for the laundry detergent. They were buy one get one for FREE and I had a dollar off coupon. I normally don't buy laundry soup because I make my own. They ended up both packages for $4.96 and I got 40 loads worth. That's a whopping 12CENTS per load. Coupon. Well. Spent.
**EDITED TO ADD** I use this site to help me decide what coupons I can and should use while shopping.
So what's my point here? You don't have to go nuts to save money. You don't have to horde your toilet paper like a dragon sitting on gold. Just use your head people :)
(Oh, and btw, I bought the beer with my bottle returns. THINKING. I does it!)
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