Couponing - a confession and explaination

So I was talking online about food costs and I mentioned that I've started using coupons. And predictably some said, there aren't coupons for what they buy so they don't bother- which is exactly what I used to say.

So with about 15 minutes of free time here, I thought I'd elaborate my crazy coupon side.

The crazy side: I usually buy 4-5 newspapers a week, sometimes fewer if the coupons there aren't what I'd possibly use. From the dollar store, so it costs me up to $5/week. We get one set of coupons mailed weekly with the circulars that come by mail, and my mom's started mailing some from my grandma, so I can potentially have 6-8 coupons that are the same. That's the key that makes the entire lock turn.

So with that, I check the circulars for the local stores and see if any of what's onsale is something I have a coupon for. If the stars align correctly, we score well. If they don't then we're not entering the store.  If you don't want to do the work, do some searches for coupon match ups and people who take this more seriously than I do have entire website/forums dedicated to where the coupon came from and where to buy what with them. I prefer to do it myself. I like the mental math challenge. And this way I only buy what I would probably buy anyway and don't find myself buying useless stuff like air fresheners, which even free or cheap give me a headache.

So for example today:

This came from CVS. Its doesn't look impressive, I know. And it does highlight my extreme weakness for Cadbury minieggs. 

But I spent $7. 43 for all in the picure and came home with $12.95 in extra care bucks, which is essentially credit to use in their store for a future purchase. 

This is how:

Their sale was 

• Mini-eggs for $2/bag if you bought $10 worth, you got $3extra care bucks (ECBs) I had a coupon for $1 off 3 so I spend $9 on those, but the net cost would be $6 after you account for the ECBs.  Told you- a serious weakness. 
• The Toothpaste and Floss were $3.59 each. I had a coupon for $1 off each of those, so the was $4.98 for those, but I got $5ecbs back for buying them, so Basically those are free. 
•   The conditioner and hair gel spray (I have a girl with curly hair that needs this stuff) were $2.98 each. I had a coupon for buy 1 get 1 free, so I paid $2.98 for both, got $2 ECBs, the net cost is .98 for the 2 of them
•  The Therafu were .99 and for 1 of those I got .99 ECB back. I had a coupon for $3 off any 2 theraflu- didn't exclude trial sizes, so I brought home 2 Theraflu and had $1 credit off my receipt and .99ECB, so those were also free, actually better than free, since the store paid me $2 to take them home, essentially. 
•   The Irish spring hair/body wash was $2.99, with $.50 off, it cost $2.50. I got $2 ECB back, so in theory this cost me .50

I had $12.58 in ECB from my last shopping trip which were applied to this order  so that brings my total cost out of pocket to $7.43. Until I added the minieggs, I was way walking out of there with nothing paid out of pocket, but *sigh* it's once a year and they'd freeze well if I can manage to hide them from the adults in the house.. Anway I came home with $12.95 ECB to spend on a next trip in the next month. I generally have somewhere between $10-15 of ECBs to spend when I do one of my CVS shopping trips. The first time the out of pocket is cost more, but once you have ECBs then you can continue using them, combine with coupons and come home with very cheap stuff.

I don't go to CVS weekly, generally there isn't enough to lure me from my house more often than every 3 weeks or so. The ECBs expire in a month, so it forces me to go about once a month at least so that I don't loose the credit.

In the same shopping plaza was Albertsons, a grocery store. They don't double coupons and they aren't my first choice in grocery stores, but...

From there I came home with

This was somewhat more impressive. I paid $13.63
The specifics are the had a buy 10 things, get $5 off. I had 2 sets of 10, so $10 off. (edited to fix typo)

•   The Propel water was .99 each, after the 10-item thing they were .49 each (there's one missing from the picture) I had 3 coupons for $1 off 2, they were free.
•  I had 6 coupons for $1.25 off pasta for buying 2 bottles of Ragu. So I got 6 free boxes of pasta. The pasta was only $1 with the store savings card, but the coupon still took $1.25 off.
• The Ragu was $1.47 each, after the 10 item deal it was .99 each and after the pasta coupon that took off $1.25, not only was the pasta free, the pasta sauce was .865 a bottle  
•   The Margarine was .99 and after the 10 thing they were .49 each. I know margarine is bad for you. In retrospect I should have gotten 2 more bottles of water to make the last 2 items needed for the 10 item set, but my dirty secret is sometimes I use margarine, especially in baking that I'm taking places. tisk tisk. bad me. I bring bad for you cookies to places where no one cares about  unprocessed foods. 
• The orange juice was $1.65, it's a splurge around here, it was on sale. I'd just spent $7 on chocolate, I can buy my hubby his not from concentrate orange juice. 

So that's it. And the truth is when I was not using coupons I never would have bought the orange juice, sample sizes of Theraflu, the hair/body wash, I would have bought the cheapest toothpaste and floss I could and I'd still end up paying about $6 for hair products for my daughter. I won't discuss my chocolate addiction budget.  I also would have bought pasta and bottled sauce (since I haven't successfully grown tomatoes in years to make my own sauce and it's cheaper to buy it instead of buying tomatoes to make sauce)  I doubt I'd have bought the water.

 The added bonus is that I starting to run out of room in my pantry.  I budget about 20% of our grocery budget for coupon stock up stuff, including the cost of the newspapers. The rest of our grocery budget goes toward food we eat on a more immediate basis, like meat, chicken, milk, bread and produce.

So there it is..  easy peasy.  And once you get started you won't be able to stop ;-)

I should have done this 3 weeks ago when I went to Ralphs (Kroger) I spent $33 and "saved" something like $200' with card and coupons' according to their receipt. They double coupons, so if you have a .50 coupon for something that costs $1, it's free. They supplied us with 8 boxes of free pizza rolls (I despise, but my sons like) 12 boxes of free noodles, 6 tubes of free toothpaste, plus yogurt, milk, produce and rolls - lots of rolls. 10 tubes of refrigerated rolls, after coupons they were $6.35 and I had a mail in $10 rebate for buying 10 participating items.. they 'paid me' $3.65 to fill my fridge with 10 tubes of rolls. See.. it's an addicting challenge.  And no, I didn't used to buy refrigerated rolls before this coupon stuff - I just couldn't afford them or justify the cost.