The Grocery Game

The coolest thing happened to me last night:

I saved more money than I spent on groceries.

I know that sounds like a funky statement, so let me expand on it a little bit. When you go to the grocery store and use your "club" card or "preferred" card (or whatever the grocery store calls their "savings" card) -so you don't get ripped off by paying the "real" (ie. marked up) price- at the end the cashier hands you the receipt, and says something like: "Thank you Ms. ....... you saved .........today", and you usually walk away feeling so good because it "looks" like you saved $18 on your $200 purchase by shopping the sale items. (just like they want you to feel). It will even give you a percentage saved, for example "your savings are 8% today". I always feel bad for the poor person that doesn't have one of these get out of jail free cards. They must be getting robbed all the time when they shop, having to pay the marked up price all the time.

Anyway, last night I tried something new, in my shopping, to see if I could find a way to cut back on our grocery budget, which always seems to balloon way out of where we want it to be.
I have been trying to figure out ways to save money on groceries for a while now. Who hasn't, I guess. It is probably a universal desire. Most of the time the issues arise from a lack of adequate planning/time, and you run to the store because you need something right then, or you know you will shortly. At this point though you are at the mercy of the store prices, maybe you can buy the cheaper brand, but that's about it.

Last April, a friend of mine in the ward, introduced me to a new way of shopping with coupons to maximize savings. I signed up for the service (which costs $10 every 2 months): I got a newspaper subscription, and started saving coupon inserts. At first they were just piling up in a stack, and I kept planning on getting an organizer for them, but it didn't really happen.

A few months went by. I hadn't really used the service or used the coupons. The coupons were just piling up, so I finally went out and got an organizer to put them in, by month, and used the service's suggested organization system to keep them easy to find. Now, they were sitting in there, nice and organized, but still not getting used. I guess I just wasn't motivated enough, and I was sort of intimidated by, what seemed to me to be, a huge time consuming process. In short, the idea wasn't doing me much good because I wasn't using it.

Here's where the motivation steps in. I badly need (okay maybe it is a want :-) a new DSLR, my current one is 6 years old, has a crushed LCD screen, and can barely focus. The poor thing is on its last leg. The problem is that nice DSLR's are pretty pricey. But, that is what I want, a nice DSLR. Where to get the money though,..... I came up with a great idea. Why don't I actually USE this money saving technique I know works, and use the money I save to buy myself a new camera!! It's a great idea, I pitch it to Joe, he likes the idea, but says I only get half of what I save....the rest goes into *sigh* real savings. Drat. Well, that's okay, it might take a little longer, but the goal is in sight.

I implemented this new technique this week, well actually just yesterday. Even up to the time I started cutting out the needed coupons I was anxious about what was going to happen, how much of a pain it would be, and if I would actually save much money. The coupon cutting process was really easy. I started at 9pm and finished around 9:30pm. Not too painful at all. I put them in my trusty little coupon "purse" organized by isle (sort of), grabbed my printed out list and headed out the door.

This is my coupon organizer and "purse":

I was in and out of the store in 30 minutes, it was the fastest "major" shopping I have ever done (it helped not having any children with me and going late at night). When I got up to the check out with my completely overflowing shopping cart there was only one check out isle open. I really hoped that no one would need to check out at the same time as I, as I was a little embarrassed to be using all these coupons and didn't really know what I was doing.

But luck doesn't favor me that way. Just as I had gotten about 50% of my stuff up on the counter there was a mad rush on the check out lane. Great. Now all these people get to watch me do this. I turned to the man behind me and apologized for having so much stuff and being slow. I told him all about what I was attempting to do and he was actually really interested to see what would happen and how much I would save. He started to relay to the people behind him what I was doing and they all turned to watch the process. An audience...wonderful. The check out guy was really cool. He was an older gentleman who obviously knew the whole process like the back of his hand.

The checker rang up all of my stuff, then had me put in my club card and give him the coupons. And then the total started to fall fast. The man behind me gasped and said, " she's already saved $75 dollars and it is still falling... now $100... WOW! $120... it's still going!" It was funny that he was commentating on it, like it was a great sporting event!! He was just as excited as I was, everyone watched the screen to see where the total would actually land. It started to slow and finally stopped $143 below the original total. Amazing. Everyone was whispering and passing on the total to the person behind them. It was really funny to see how much everyone else was into it.

Look at these numbers!!

(I am sure that I will get even better at maximizing these savings, with time!)

I was ecstatic. I had just saved $143. My total was now only $140. In the end the amount I paid was less than the amount I saved!! I had a 51% savings!! That means that everything I had just bought had averaged more than half off!! How cool is that?!! That was the funnest grocery shopping trip I have ever made!! I will definitely be doing that more often. Who can argue with those kinds of results?!!!!

Here is my haul:
(well 70% of it anyway, the rest was already put away)

If I spend that much money each week I will have cut our grocery bill by around 75%!!! I can see my mountain of money now......

A snapshot of one very happy shopper: