Coupon Queen

Ok, so maybe I'm not a coupon queen. But I do have to say that thanks to my friend Kate, I am much more able to make our $50/week grocery budget work. I have learned valuable lessons and am still learning, but I think that I've come to a point where I definitely feel like this is a skill that is very useful for helping make the most of what we have.

Yesterday through tomorrow at our local Harris Teeter they are tripling coupons. Usually they double them up to $.99 (as do Kroger, up to $.50 and Lowe's Foods, up to $.99) but about once every 2 months they triple. So, that means that a coupon that's usually worth, say, $.75 is actually worth $2.25 on triple days, where it's worth $1.50 at aforementioned stores any other day. Example: this coupon says save $.55. But yesterday it was worth $1.65 off my grocery bill. Since Teriyaki sauce was on sale for $1.50, I got it for free, plus an additional $.15 off my bill. A lot of people will buy as many as they can to get the extra money off their bill...I personally think that that is going a bit too far. But we didn't have Teriyaki sauce, and now we do! So, how does it all work?

Shannon and I get the Sunday paper for $1 an issue, delivered to our door. Shannon's dad has also been kind enough to start mailing us the coupons from their Sunday paper. Every week when I make our grocery list I check the sale papers with the coupons I have, checking for anything that's a great deal that we might need later (eg: hand soap that I bought today for $.30, using a coupon), or that we need now that I can get for a better price than I can by going to, say, WalMart. Anyways, when triples happen you really have to plan what you're going to buy, because you're only allowed to go to the store once per day and you can only use 20 coupons. So, on Thursday I made my list and then yesterday I went to Harris Teeter at 9 am. Here's my loot:

A breakdown:
Honey Nut Chex
3 boxes Barilla pasta
2 boxes Special K granola bars
2 packages Ortega taco seasoning
1 loaf Arnold's bread
4 packages Uncle Ben's brown rice
Snyder's pretzel pieces
Kikkoman teriyaki sauce
French's spicy mustard
Tea bags
KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce
Joy dishsoap
2 cans of Gillette shaving cream
Dove deodorant
3 toothbrushes
Colgate sensitive toothpaste

Total time spent in stores: 1hour, 10 minutes
Number of stores visited: 2
Coupons used: 22
The grand total: $7.84
Coupons tendered: $52.64
Money saved between coupons and sales: $63.95

I think I paid for our newspaper subscription for a year. At least.