So I started researching and trying to find a blog/website that could teach me how to coupon and get those kind of amazing results. Unfortunately, most of what I found are for ladies who shop at Publix. I would loveeee for Texas to have Publix, mainly because they seem to be the most coupon-friendly. And, just to make it even more difficult to find a blog that does all the work for me (by posting store specials and coupon match ups), apparently Tom Thumb is only a north Texas thing? Who knew.
Luckily I ended up at the krazy coupon lady's blog. She does weekly Safeway deals and they seem to be the same as Tom Thumb's for the most part, since they are the same company.
The krazy coupon lady suggests that you by four newspapers. Now I felt quite ridiculous doing this, and thought for sure two people couldn't need enough groceries for four newspaper's worth of coupons no matter how much we were stocking up!
My four newspapers yielded all these coupons/sale ads
These are all the coupons I ended up clipping (one newspaper's worth)
Which left me with all of these coupons books if I needed extras of anything
Now pretty much my next step was to look through all the sale ads (or use the krazy coupon lady blog, but I kind of forgot to do this step which would have made things way easier) and match up things that are on sale at a particular store or Tom Thumb coupons with all my manufacturer coupons I had clipped. This is ridiculously time consuming and tedious. Also, it's hard to know what is a good deal on something when I've just started and I'm used to just paying whatever price something is whenever I need it. This is why I only ended up with two good deals so far out of all of this.
So in the Albertson's sale ad I notice two good deals. First, boneless skinless chicken breasts are buy one get two free with the coupon. Amazing, right? Hardly. I go in the store, find my chicken breasts (in the chicken section of course) and try to use the coupon I brought with me.
(Sidenote: don't use the self checkout aisle. I was thinking this would be the least annoying, but of course it turned out to be the opposite. The overseer of the self checkouts had to come approve every coupon I used. I only used 5 and it took 20 minutes. People in line behind me were surely contemplating running me over with their baskets.)
Well, the self checkout overseer comes over and informs me I have the wrong chicken breasts for the coupon, which seems impossible because they say "boneless skinless chicken breasts", are the correct brand, and they were the only ones like them in the chicken section. Apparently, the ones you can use the coupon on are located by the doors? So I annoy everyone in line just a little more, at the overseer's urging, and go get three of the correct packages of chicken. Just a couple of differences between this chicken and the other ones I picked. They have seasoning and they cost four times as much. Super. I don't notice this until I have scanned the first package and I wasn't about to call the overseer over to cancel this now that the people in line are checking their watches, sighing, and pretending to commit suicide using their fingers as guns. Instead, I ended up with three packages of chicken for $18. The normal three packages with no coupon= $18. I got a few free sprinkles of seasoning. Oh well, we now are the proud owners of a year's supply of expensive chicken (I sliced the breasts lengthwise because they need to be thin for our George Foreman and ended up with 16!).
(Sidenote: don't use the self checkout aisle. I was thinking this would be the least annoying, but of course it turned out to be the opposite. The overseer of the self checkouts had to come approve every coupon I used. I only used 5 and it took 20 minutes. People in line behind me were surely contemplating running me over with their baskets.)
Well, the self checkout overseer comes over and informs me I have the wrong chicken breasts for the coupon, which seems impossible because they say "boneless skinless chicken breasts", are the correct brand, and they were the only ones like them in the chicken section. Apparently, the ones you can use the coupon on are located by the doors? So I annoy everyone in line just a little more, at the overseer's urging, and go get three of the correct packages of chicken. Just a couple of differences between this chicken and the other ones I picked. They have seasoning and they cost four times as much. Super. I don't notice this until I have scanned the first package and I wasn't about to call the overseer over to cancel this now that the people in line are checking their watches, sighing, and pretending to commit suicide using their fingers as guns. Instead, I ended up with three packages of chicken for $18. The normal three packages with no coupon= $18. I got a few free sprinkles of seasoning. Oh well, we now are the proud owners of a year's supply of expensive chicken (I sliced the breasts lengthwise because they need to be thin for our George Foreman and ended up with 16!).
Now onto the success story. Albertson's sale ad had buy four P&G products and get $4 off your total purchase. These toothpastes were on sale for $1.99, down from $3.29. If you bought four, you got another $4 off, making them $1 each. Well, turns out buying four newspapers was a good idea, because each came with a $.75 off coupon! So I ended up getting each of these toothpastes for $.25 instead of $3.29. Yay!
(For comparison, that travel toothpaste cost $.99, all four of my amazing deal toothpastes cost $1 total!)
So, if anyone is still with me, I think couponing will eventually totally be worth the while. It's a ton of work and I have so much to learn but I am very proud of my one good buy so far! Small victories.
Also, we went grocery shopping tonight at Tom Thumb and couponing the lazy way (that is not matching up with deals or store coupons) saved us $28 and we ended up with $136 in groceries for $108. Not as awesome as 4 toothpastes for $1, but still worth my time clipping all those coupons!
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