Couponing

There is a woman in our ward who can buy $200 worth of groceries for $30, I swear. She does it all by couponing. When Adam heard about the miracle of clipping coupons and told me about it, I was all for giving it a try. So I went out and bought my binder with my plastic baseball card sleeves to hold my coupons and sharpened my scissors. I got two Sunday newspapers and printed more coupons online. I clipped and organized for at least three days. I made my list and hit the supermarket.

The first deal was the Kraft deal. If you bought $25 worth of qualifying Kraft products you would get $5 off your next purchase and a $20 check in the mail. So the groceries were FREE. However, I found that a lot of the "qualifying" items were things that we didn't need. But I had to buy $25 worth, so I loaded up on the grated mozzarella cheese - after all you can always freeze it.

The second deal was to buy 10 Kellogg's items and get a $10 rebate check. So I loaded up on the cereal and the Pop Tarts and the Yogos (really just candy disguised as a nutritious yogurt covered fruit snack).

The final deal was if you bought four "qualifying" General Mills items, you would get a free gallon of milk on your next visit. So I piled in the General Mills items. So, with my cart full of sugar cereals, crackers and mozzarella cheese, I made my way to the check out. I had a coupon for nearly everything in my basket and I was confident that I was going to be able to whip out two $20 bills and pay for it all. Then I was going to get all that money back and free milk.

Then there was the coupons themselves. 55 cents off TWO. $1 off SIX. 60 cents off ONE 15 oz. box. I had to read and reread all of them. Did my purchase match, was it the right size, the right brand? Oh the detail! I nearly started hyperventilating before I even made it to the checkout.

And here were the other problems. I was so worried about getting $25 of Kraft stuff that I way over bought. I mean, were they counting the regular price, the sale price or the price I actually paid with my coupon? I didn't know, so I just piled in the qualifying purchases, hoping it would hit $25. I did okay on the Kelloggs, but you needed an "original store receipt" to claim both your Kraft and Kellogg rebates! Oh, no, they only would give me one, what was I going to do? So I had to go back and have the store manager print me a "report receipt" from the computer. As for the free milk, I was so confused with buying the Kelloggs cereals and other products, trying to make sure that I had ten, that I only bought 3 qualifying GM cereals and thus lost out on the milk deal. I walked out of there in a daze, my head spinning.

Basically, I came home, having spent our entire weeks grocery budget on cereal, crackers, macaroni and cheese and shredded mozzarella. The store receipt said I saved over $100. But I felt like a total looser and that I had wasted my time and my family's money. I still had to go to a different store the next day and buy meat, bread, eggs and MILK because there was no way I was paying the other supermarket's inflated prices.

The lesson I take away from this - clip and stock up if it's a good deal, but don't count on getting the food you actually need this week from coupons. I'm going back to my old grocery store where everything is on sale compared to the "coupon friendly" supermarket. I spend less and I get what I need for my family. There's so many other things that cause stress in my life, I don't need to add grocery shopping.