Have you watch Extreme Couponing and said “if she can do it, so can I”?  That was my thought the first time I watch the show.  Then I realized that these women and men were able to extreme coupon for pennies on the dollar because their grocery stores would double or triple coupons.  To my surprise, I was disappointed to find out that the stores in my local area do not double or triple coupons.  (Note: Just recently did Schucks in DeKalb double coupons – rare event for them!).

I came to the reality that I would not get groceries as cheap as they do in the TV Series, but I could still save my family money.  So, my daughter and I began with spending between 4-5 hours on Sundays clipping coupons.  Next we had to organize those coupons – another 2 hours at least.  So already we have spent 7 hours just getting coupons.

Now it’s time to start comparing sales fliers to the coupons we have.  We compared Walgreens,  WalMart, Target, Schnucks, Hy-Vee, and Brown’s Country Market. I quickly noticed that some stores had the same items on sale, but one stores price per item was usually better than the other store.  Reading the coupon policies (30 minutes) for each of these stores also helped me realize that a few of them offer “price matching”.  Simply bring the ad from the competitor and the store will honor the sale price in the ad at their location.  Whew!  That just saved me running to 6 different stores!

After becoming a bit frustrated, I turned to my computer skills.  For each sales flier, I took a sharpie and circled the items that interested me.  Then it was time for Microsoft Excel.  I created a spreadsheet that contained product and then a column for each store.  The first column is product, so this is where I entered the name of each product I circled.  In the same row as the product I would list sale price or terms (buy 10) in each of the store columns.  Using Excel calculations, I could then break this down to what each individual product cost would be per store.  This allowed me to easily see which store truly had the best offer.

Once my Excel spreadsheet was completed, I could then compare the sale items to the coupons I have in my envelopes.  I personally do not like to use a binder, because I don’t have enough time to spend organizing it.  We have envelopes A-Z and coupons are placed the envelope by manufacturer name.  All in all we spent another 2 hours creating the excel spreadsheet and comparing coupons.

I haven’t even made it to the store yet and I have spent 9.5 hours clipping coupons, organizing and preparing for the items I want to purchase.  But, I am ready to head to the store and save some money!

Off to the store I go!  I decide to shop at Hy-Vee because they will match any competitor’s ad.  With my handy spreadsheet I am able to quickly refer to the ad that beat their prices.  I spend over 2 hours in the store, check-in my list, getting products, and checking out.  YES! I saved money, if I remember correctly it was 48% savings.

However, I spent 11.5 hours of my time to get that 48% savings.  And that was only for one week of sales fliers and coupons!  To coupon on a weekly basis would be 46 hours per month. My point here is that couponing is not as easy as it sounds!  It takes hard work and dedication.

Many people start off couponing and fall off just as quickly because of the time involved.  As a busy mom of five children, who holds and full-time job and attends college full-time I was one of those people.  I lasted about 3-4 weeks, and then I just didn’t have the time to commit and I was frustrated.

Just recently, I found a tool that could save me 5 hours a week – a coupon clipping service!  After much research on the Internet I located The Coupon Clippers.  For a small handling fee of you can get the coupons you want.  When I say handling fee I mean small .05 cents, .10 cents, .12 cents, .15 cents, etc.  I figure my time is worth $25 per hour X 5 hours I spent clipping = $125.  That’s a whole lot of coupons that I don’t have to clip ~ they just arrive in my mailbox.  Time spent searching site for coupons ~ less than 1 hour!

So, once again, this household will start couponing thanks to The Coupon Clippers service.  Coupons will arrive in a few days, and we will share our results and process with you!  Stay tuned as a beginning couponer gets started all over again.

Good luck in your couponing adventure!

Becky