Affordable {FREE} Groceries

Another unbelievable week of coupons is upon us.  For those who don’t participate in Coupon $ense, please bear with me as I shamelessly brag about my grocery store savings.  It’s just too good not to share the diligence by which I’m saving my husband’s hard earned money.  It’s testimony time!

Today the store that sucked me in was Fry’s.  They have a Buy 10 Get $5 Off deal going on, with a maximum of 3 per transaction.  So here’s what I got:

8 bottles Powerade, 3 boxes Scalloped Potatoes, 3 Quaker Oats, 4 Mashed potato pouches, 6 cans evap milk, 3 xL liquid hand soap, 1 Hefty sandwich bags, 3 Colgate toothpaste, 3 Shick 10-count (cute pink) razors and 2 boxes Macky-Cheese.   THIRTY-SIX items should have cost $73.50 …………. drum roll please ……………. and I paid …………….. $5.31.  That’s a 93% savings.

You just gotta love a system that can save you this much money.  If you’re curious, you can check it out at www.CouponSense.com.  It is not available in all areas, but if it is in your town……. needless to say, I highly recommend it.  I get 3 Sunday papers each week + the C$ fee so I pay $30 per month for the whole schpeel.  I saved that twice over just with one trip to the store. 

I have cut my grocery bill in more-than-half from $570 to $250 per month for a family of five (plus a dog).  My pantry has never been this full.  I started C$ in January and I have tracked my savings all along on the site.  In coupons ALONE I have saved more than $1,065 and received more than $89 in rebates.  The other deal is knowing when the stores have their super sales.  Totally worth it!

I know you’re thinking I spend hours per week cutting coupons and filing them alpha-chronologically, but NO.  The site tells me where the best deals are.  I pick one or two stores every other week.  I clip the ones I need (3 at a time) and it maybe takes me 20 minutes every other week.  Well worth it, in my humble opinion.  And no, I don’t get paid to advertise for Coupon $ense, but I should.

I’m done preaching now.  (I didn’t think about the election for a whole 15 minutes just now!)

The New Me…. according to my family

Yes, I’ve become the coupon lady.  Relax, I’m not buying cases of cat food for the cat we don’t have just because I have a coupon…..   But I am buying six bottles of Aunt Jemima’s Buttery Syrup in one trip….  well, wouldn’t you if you could buy it at 77% off?  Never in my life have I run out the front door in my PJs… until now.  The explanation… the Sunday morning newspaper coupon books draw me like a fly to fly paper.  Yes, I’ve joined the coupon saving women of Arizona. 

Let me set you straight right up front.  We don’t clip every single blinkin’ coupon, nor do we keep them filed alphabetically in see-through baseball card holding binder pages.  That’s for obsessive compulsive coupon clippers, of which, I am not a card carrying member, and never will be. (unless I’m put in a home later in life….)

I simply found out about a system, called Coupon Sense, that organizes the coupons and the grocery store adds in a tidy, accessible website.  I type in my grocery list.  It spits out a paper telling me what store has the best deals that I’m currently in the market for.  I only cut the coupon if I’m going to use it….. when the item is already on sale.  You can’t knock a system that costs less than two venti frappuccinos and saves you HUNDREDS of DOLLARS. 

Seriously.  I feel compelled to testify.  On my grocery bill the first month, I saved 49%.  YES, SAVED.   Now, keep in mind this was for a family of five, plus a dog, two chickens and too many guppies.  Total cost would’ve been $454.  Store savings: $154 (going when what I needed was on sale!)  Coupon savings: $69 (See, this ain’t the $.25 coupon deal you’re thinking I’m sucked into.) Total spent: $231.  A savings of 49%, thank you very much.  And I didn’t even pick up the FREE mustard…. because we don’t like mustard. My freezer is stocked.  My pantry is bulging.  I’m elated, to say the absolute least.

“Then you must be spending hours getting ready to shop at seventeen different stores,” you think in your sarcastic inner-voice.  Ixnay on the Oicevay.  Ok, it might have taken me two hours because it was my first time doing it…. and so I saved $223 for those two hours.  Can’t beat that with a short stick on a Saturday night.

I’m climbing off my soapbox now.  Breathe easy.  It’s not available in many states yet.  Although, I would recommend some entrepreneur-minded individual to start it in each state.  www.couponsense.com.  If it suits you, great.  (put my name, Linda Crosby, under referral)  If not, great.  Shop strong.  Peace out.

www.LindaCrosby.com