Three of my favorite things: shopping, sales and food

I just started to get the hang of "couponing". My friends have been talking about it for a while now and anything that involves shopping, sales and food is something I want to get in on. So I've done some research and the picture above is my first stab at it. Here are the totals:

Original Price of Groceries: $87.71
Amount Spent: $35.28
Money Saved: $52.43

I'm sure I can get better deals as I get more organized and prepared, but I was pretty impressed with my first run. This is how I did it....I started collecting the coupon books from the Sunday paper and saving them whole (I don't cut out the coupons). Then I watched to tutorials on Savvy Shopper Deals.com and fiddled around on the site. They have an interactive "shopping wizard" which shows all sales for Target, Albertons, Smiths, Harmons, Maceys, Kmart, Reams, Rite Aid, Walgreens and Shopko. Then it pairs up coupons (from the paper) with sales and rates how good the deal is. If it is rated WOW! then it's a great deal.

Case in point: At Albertsons they have Betty Crocker cake mixes on sale 4 for $5. So $1.25 each. But if you buy 10 of them they will give you a $10 coupon off your next order at Albertsons. Which makes them $.25 each. So what I did is get the 10 cake mixes and buy them first. I got the $10 coupon from the register and applied it to the rest of my purchases. I ended up paying $12.50 for the 10 boxes of cake mix and $1.40 for the rest of my groceries (3 cans of soup, 2 packages of cheese slices, 2 Nabisco Go Paks and 4 loaves of Grandma Sycamore bread).

Not only is this practical but it's fun too. I love to get a deal and I love to buy food at a deal. I can't wait for my next time around!

Side Note: I went back the next day and bought $118 worth of groceries (mostly snack foods and cereals) for only $40!! I bought 39 items so they come out to be $1 a peice. Not bad!