Extreme Couponing - California Style

I am hooked on that Extreme Couponing show.  I am amazed by what those shoppers can achieve at the checkout line.  I am jealous of their 96% savings.  I am flabbergasted by their $25,000 stockpiles.  I am in awe of the time spent on couponing.  You get the idea....

But I can't do what they do where I live.  There is no longer a grocery store that double coupons, since Ralphs closed about 5  years ago.  And we aren't allowed to do coupon stacking, the process by which a shopper can use multiple manufacturer coupons on one item to bring the price down, sometimes all the way to zero.  So how extreme can I actually get?

Well... I can save almost half every time I go to the store.  For me, for this area, I think that's pretty darn good.  But it takes work, every week to keep it up.  I go to 6 different stores almost every week, and the trick to being successful is knowing the "regular" price of the items we use all the time.  There will never be a $25,000 stockpile in my garage, but I do stock up on what we use.

There are tricks to maximizing savings.  Each Sunday, I clip coupons for items we use and things we might want to try.  Then I go through the ads for the stores where I know I can get the best deals: CVS, Walgreen's, and Target (grocery store ads show up on Tuesday or Wednesday).  I look for, again, only the things we use.  I always try to match up sales with coupons.  I also look for rewards that the stores give, so I can save money on the next trip.  I had $5 in reward coupons from Walgreen's - Christian and I got our movie candy free!  I do the same at Vons and Savemart - at those stores, I ONLY shop for sale items that I have coupons for; otherwise, they are just too expensive.  And my final stop is Winco for everything else. 

Winco rocks!  Let me just put it to you this way: I save almost $3 a box on my Kashi cereal (and I buy 3 boxes at a time), almost $4 a bag on Christian's spicy chicken wings, and over $1 a gallon for milk.  Just on those items alone, I save $20 by shopping at Winco every pay period.  And that's just a small example of what I save there.

My mom taught me how to coupon when I was a kid.  I've done it off and on for years, but this year we got serious, and I am getting a lot more out of our grocery budget.  While I may not be able to save 96%, I am still proud of what I am able to do.  Want to learn more about my methods?  Message me on Facebook!