My Trial Run:
Ok, so you've heard about the Super Coupon-ers who buy a $1000's worth of food and get $.01 back. Sounds great right?! So I thought why can't I do this, I mean you can never have too many antacids, or cans of petrified meat that never expires.
So I did a little planning.
I decided where I wanted to shop, a local grocery store and then a large bulk chain, BJ's. I looked over their weekly ad for specials and any extra coupons. And decided what I needed to buy.
Then it was time to look for the coupons. I bought the local paper, but a little disappointed with only a couple of fliers, and mostly adds for designer checks and back supporting bras. So I clipped the few coupons that I thought would be worth the purchase.
Then I joined a flurry of coupon sites on-line, to find out that they all have the same online coupons that are available.
Next it was onto the manufactures sites directly. This I found to be pretty tedious and time consuming. But the sites that did offer coupons I felt excited and a rush to continue looking.
After hours of preparing, over two days I was ready to shop. I could tell at this point I wasn't going to be getting any money back from the stores, but I was hopeful that I would be saving quite a bit of money.
So I decided to try BJs, bought items I mostly needed, added a few extra I may not have normally bought, to qualify for some of the coupons you need to purchase multiple items.
Total amount at register $300 - coupons $91 = $209 amount paid. Ok so not a super shopper but I felt great about the savings.
The thing to remember about this chain is that they will take a manufacturer's coupon in addition to their coupons that they put out. BJs coupons are sent out monthly to members and can also be found online in their website.
One of the better ways to save here is when they put out their coupon magazine, inside some of the manufacturers come out with the Buy 5 items save $10. And then on top of that savings I also add at least one coupon for each item, so their could be at least 5 additional $1.00 coupons on top of that for a total savings of $15 for buy 5 items. This is almost like buying 2 items get 3 free.
Couple of other tips I found, you do need to know your prices just because it is bulk doesn't mean it is a better price. You may have a coupon to save $1.00 when you buy one, but the item may run $6.00 for the larger bulk size so you pay $5.00. But if you were to use the same coupon at a grocery store the smaller item may only be $2.50 and you only pay $1.50, and then use 2 coupons for buying two of the same item you may be at the bulk size and have only spent $3.00 rather than $5.00
Also when you start searching for coupons and deals it might be a good choice to have a separate email address for all the Junk email to go to. Then you only need to check it when you are ready to shop and won't bog down your regular email.
So are there savings to be had, absolutely, will I be saving $1000s of dollars? Maybe not next month, but I will be getting ready for my next trip to the grocery store to see how much I can save. Wish me luck!
