Play Money: Using Coupons to Make the Most of Your Shopping Budget

play moneyWhy is it so easy to walk into your favorite clothing store and spend $150 without breaking a sweat but when walking out of your grocery store after spending the same amount you’re on the verge of a panic attack? For me there are a number of reasons, groceries are and expense made every week, clothes last so much longer, obviously it’s just more fun to buy clothes, but most importantly after spending that much on groceries I know I could have saved money if I had just broken out some coupons.Frankly, in  this day and age there is no excuse for not using coupons at the grocery store. They are found everywhere-from blatantly in front of your item at the grocery store, to your door step on Sunday morning in the paper, and of course, the internet! It’s like monopoly money that you can really spend.

Grocery coupons are everywhere and combined with weekly sales at your favorite grocery store it’s not unheard of the cut your bill in half. All it takes is a bit of organization. The average 4 person household in the United States spends $600 a month on groceries. My household of 4 spends on average about $140 to $170 a week on groceries. So I decided to practice what I preach. This week I went grocery shopping coupons in hand after doing my research, my grocery bill went from $127 before coupons down to $53.49, that’s a savings of 57%! How did I do it you ask?

Hello did I not just say? I went straight to my computer and looked up a favorite coupon site. On that website I did my back ground work and looked up the 3 grocery stores they have in my state and sorted by %saved and saw the store that had my highest savings percentage. It turns out that there is a grocery store that doubles coupons that are under $0.50.

Next I looked up all the items that had coupons available and printed them out from redplum.com, coupons.com and couponmom.com. After printing out my play money I was off to the store. I stuck to my usual list and I was off to a great start. Then low and behold I was picking up pasta an item I didn’t have a coupon for and there was a flashing light in the isle for $0.55 off a box of pasta. Lucky break? I think not.

Once I got to the checkout line I was a little nervous. Generally I buy store brands but not today. I got the name brand items I had coupons for and I did my research and bought items that were on sale if I didn’t have coupons for them. I saved $28 with in store savings, and I had so many coupons that a manager had to be called over to approve. The in store savings in addition to my $73 of play money I saved $101!

Now I deserve a play shopping trip with that real money!

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