Thursday, December 3, 2009

Savings with Coupons

I hear folks say often "I can never do that", or "that's just impossible", or "that's just once in a while", but here's some proof that major savings using coupons CAN be obtained - and obtained often.

Yes, it takes some work. And in the begining - lots of work and lots of mistakes. Over time, though, you can save your family lots of money, never be out of stock on essential household items, and even have things you can donate to folks less fortunate.

Kroger Receipt

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

My goodness. More details, please!

Alicia said...

Sorry it took so long to reply!

Are you in an area with a Kroger? This receipt is from their recent Mega sale - buy 10 items (mix and match), get $5.00 off your order.

Kroger (in my area) doubles coupons up to .50. That means a coupon for .50 doubles to take off $1.00, a coupon for .35 doubles to .70, but a coupon for .55 takes off only .55. Some areas double up to $1.00, and some areas will even triple coupons to compete with other stores (like Harris Teeter). That happens in Nashville regularly - but I've not had the chance to shop in that area yet.

There were several items included in that mega sale that were either free or gave "overage". For instance, there were coupons for the Bumblebee tuna that was included in the sale. The tuna was regularly priced at .89, and after purchasing 10 of them you would get $5.00 off of your transaction - making them .39 each after the sale. The available manufacturer's coupons were for .55/1 and 1.00/1. (Coupon values often vary regionally.)

With the 1.00 coupon, you would get .61 in "overage", and with the .55/1 couopn you would get .16 in overage. Here is a quick math breakdown - and I'll include the TN tax to show how I figure out my shopping:

8.90 - 10 tuna
.69 - TN 7.75% tax on food
9.59 subtotal
-10.00 - 10x 1.00 manufacturer coupons
-5.00 - mega sale event
(-$5.41) final total. Yes - that's over $5 in the negative!

Now, they will not normally give you cash back, so if you are going to have overage, you would want to purchase other things in your order (milk, eggs, meat, whatever you want). Sometimes I like to throw in a low value giftcard.

Another great thing with Kroger is that you can load eCoupons to your shopper's card. There are P&G eSaver coupons, shortcuts coupons, cellfire coupons, and a newer one I can't think of off the top of my head right now (but if you go to Kroger's website, you can find it in their coupon section). The neat thing with these is that you can use the electronic coupon PLUS a paper coupon on the item.

For instance, for the mega sale, Activia, DanActive, and another yogurt were included (yofiber/yoplus I think). They were $1.49 after the mega sale discount. I got one of each variety (you can only use the eCoupon once per card). The eCoupon was for 1.00, and I had a paper coupon for 1.00 - giving me .51 in overage for each of those items.

The overage helps pay for the other items in my order, or things that I don't have coupons for at the time - maybe chicken, etc...

Then, on top of that, there were some catalina deals going on at the time. That's a whole other fun aspect of couoponing! Oh - and I believe there were a couple items that were eligible for rebates too.

Even without the mega sales you can get great deals and savings at the store if you shop wisely with couopns! If you have more questions, let me know. :)

Betsy said...

Is that saying that your total was less than $1??? WOW--even though I know you're good at this coupon thing, that is super impressive!!!

Alicia said...

LOL! Yes, it was less than .50! I wish it happened like that all the time, but I'm not always so fortunate. :)