Couponing Update and Awesome Target Haul

My enthusiasm has been waning for couponing lately. I still do it but I've started to find it really time consuming and not that much of a pay off. The first month I did it, I cut out every-stinking-coupon and that was a huge waste of time! I ended up taking out all the coupons from my binder the next month and that really sucked! So I'm not doing it that way again....I have devised what I think is a better system and it seems to be working so far.

I've also been frustrated in general with the lack of great deals in our area. Like I mentioned before, Schnucks only doubles coupons $.40 and lower so it makes it really hard! They only double 15 coupons per transaction too. Plus we are paying for papers every month. But anyways, last week some really great deals came up at Target and it totally renewed my excitement about couponing! I was able to score an awesome haul with not too much prep time. So I think my new system works!

So at Target this week I saved 59%! Can you believe it!?! That is so awesome for me. I got some great deals. I was proud of myself. The transaction would have been $106.74, but with coupons it was only $44.47! Check out this receipt!

So for $44.47 I got:
8 Bottles of Dove Shampoo/Conditioner
8 Bottles of Panetene Shampoo/Conditioner
4 Tubes of Crest 3D White Toothpaste
1 Rimmell Eyeshadow
2 Sally Hanson Nail Polish Colors
4 Packs of Extra Gum

AND! I got 2 gift cards for $5 each. (But they don't let you use those on that transaction, darn!)

This was my favorite part of the receipt:

Isn't that great! I'm proud of myself. I hope I can find more great deals like this! And I think we are good on shampoo for a while...lol

My First Big Haul

So when you read the couponing craziness post did you think to yourself, "I hope she's not going to turn into one of those crazy people who post pictures of their shopping trips online." Well if you did think that you might want to avert your eyes...because look at all the stuff I got on my latest couponing trip to Target!

Guess how much I paid for all that stuff? Around $45! I think that is pretty awesome by beginners couponing standards. And that's not even all the stuff I got. I had already taken some of the snacky foods to work. Listen to all this stuff I got: 3 packs of gum, 1 package of frozen chicken breasts, 2 packages of taco shells, 2 ready to eat oriental dinners, 10 flavored waters, 2 huge bottles of shampoo, 2 packages of ziploc bags, 4 packages of easy mac (4 single servings each), 3 kraft dressings, chips and salsa. That is a lot, I think! If I would have paid full price for everything it would have been over $80. But with sales, coupons and store offers I saved about 40%! I am pretty proud of myself. This is only one of my very first attempts but I think almost half off is darn good. I hope I can do even better next time.

Here are some tips for frequent Target shoppers I have learned so far. Target offers a debit card. Its free to use and it links directly to your checking account (so its just like using your bank debit card). The best part is whenever you use it you get 5% off! That's everytime you shop at Target! How awesome is that!?! Another Target tip, you get 5 cents off your order for every reusable bag you bring in, and they don't even have to be Target bags! So you better believe I brought all that stuff home in our reusable bags. Yay for saving the environment and money!!

Couponing Craziness

Couponing...I'm a little obsessed. Have you guys seen that crazy reality TV show on TLC Extreme Couponing? LOVE! This show makes me coupon crazy! I look at these people and think, "Get all my groceries for free? Sounds great! I can do that!" It made me really jealous at first and then really thinking about it. I had been talking it over with Steve for a while and he finally said, "Why don't you just do it!?"

So I am going to try it out. I don't plan to get 250 copies of the newspaper or pay to have coupons clipped and sent to my door so it won't exactly be "extreme couponing". Thanks to the policies of our local supermarkets in St. Louis (their doubling policy sucks!), I doubt I will ever be able to do any of the crazy grocery trips you see on that show where you save 90% off your bill. But I mean, it is reality TV right? That's not realistic to save that much I don't think. But I think I should be able to save my family some money and learn more about this crazy hobby. So here we go...
Now, I'm not going to lie, at first I was super intimidated. I thought how the heck do they do that!?! But thanks to the glory of the internet you can really look up anything. So I researched couponing and found tons and tons of sites to help me. My two favorite are The Krazy Coupon Lady and Couponing 101. They both have user friendly tutorials for how to get started located Here Here and Here. I studied up on the basics of couponing by reading their tutorials and tips and just generally clicking around on their websites. They have really great how to's and FAQ sections that break it down so it wasn't hard to understand the basics pretty quickly.

But since the ladies running these websites aren't local, I needed to find a resource to our local grocery stores. Luckily the internet saved me again. Actually Couponing 101 has a list of couponing websites by state. There are a few on there for Missouri. By far my favorite is Clippin' With Carie. She is so quick on posting updates and deals with the current store ads. Its really great. Plus, like I said, she is local so you know she will have the best deals that are happening in St. Louis.

Using Carie's website it really is super easy to coupon. She breaks down the ads for your favorite stores this week and matches them up to coupons from your newspaper. She also finds internet coupons that match too. How easy is that!? (Side note, I LOVE internet coupons. They are so easy to use, just click and print. And you can often print several copies of one coupon! Sweet!) I mean that is really the gist of this couponing thing: Find a good deal, match it up with a coupon or two and go to town.

So even though I am just getting into this couponing thing, it is really addictive! I have done a trip to Target and one to Schnucks so far and have been really proud of some of the deals I was able to find! Of course, since I am just starting I wasn't able to save beaucoup bucks...yet! Plus we don't have anything on hand at home so I had to buy some things that we absolutely needed at (gasp) full price! But I did get about a 30% savings at Target on my first try (about $23 bucks) and a 15% savings at Schnucks this week (about $14 bucks). So, not too bad in my book! I'll let you know how it goes in the future!