Coupons: Stick to your guns!

Well, diligence paid off for me today when I ran to Target for a quick shopping trip. My main purpose was to transfer a prescription and use the $10 Giftcard coupon that was in the Target ad a few weeks ago. I left my prescription at the pharmacy to continue my shopping, wanting to make sure I bought the Mighty Dog cans of food since my coupons for them were expiring soon.

We strolled through the store at a fast pace since I had a limited amount of time before my son exploded like a ticking time bomb. I grabbed what I needed, made sure I had a coupon for each thing I purchased and headed to the front to find a friendly cashier. The cashier did turn out to be friendly, but very much in a hurry. After he rang up all of my items, bagged them, and gave me my total I handed over my coupons and he hurriedly scanned a few of them pushing buttons and shoving my coupons in the little drawer. He gave me my new total, which seemed high to me and I was really at that point ready to pay because of the two year old and the fact that his supervisor had just turned his light off and he was going on his lunch break. I try to calculate in my head approximately how much my order will be after coupons because inevitably one of my coupons gets missed and it's a bit of a hassle to have everything corrected after the fact, since my two year old is usually a bit antsy at this point. I asked him politely if he could check my coupons because my total seemed high.

Here's where the fun began. My Mighty Dog cans of food were supposed to be free and instead of keying in the amount for the coupon that would make them free, he removed them from my ticket all together. The total still seemed high and I could see on his computer that two of my $2.25/1 Electrasol coupons had not been scanned. He asked me how many coupons I had for the Electrasol and how many boxes I had, and I told him five of each. He was either in a hurry or very trusting, because he again took the two items off of my order all together and after all was said and done I walked out paying $3.51 which was a few dollars lower than I had anticipated.

I really would have been happy with the correct total and the actual items on my receipt with the appropriate coupons being used. Normally I would have paid the higher price without all of my coupons being rung up correctly, because it's so much of a hassle to get it corrected, but today I had stuck to my guns because I decided every penny really does count. Here's what I purchased for my $3.51

5 Boxes Electrasol $2.94 Each (used 5 coupons for $2.25/1 9/7SS, cashier only used 3 of them)

2 Kraft EZ Mac containers $.77 Each (used $1/2 coupon 8/24SS)

2 Safety Scissors on clearance $.36 Each

2 Mighty Dog canned food $.50 Each (used 2 free coupons 8/10SS)

The picture only has one of the boxes of Kraft EZ Mac since we had the other one at lunch.

Pampers Gifts to Grow Program

Pampers has a wonderful program for moms of infants through toddlers. It offers a newsletter via email with valuable information based on your child's age, coupons for Pampers products, and samples. My favorite part about the program is Pampers Gifts to Grow program that rewards you for purchasing their products, which include diapers, training pants, and wipes. Once you sign up for the Gifts to Grow program you simply enter your codes found inside the product package and redeem them for the gifts available on their site.

Pampers is also offering a free Potty Training Kit for those with little ones that are in the potty training stage. The kit includes a training pants sample, coupons, and potty training charts to encourage your little one to continue potty training.

Random Thoughts:My "Aha!" moment

I started couponing more than 2 years ago, and really began to understand what it meant to coupon after about a year. I guess I'm a slow learner. A typical shopping trip for me prior to understanding coupons would be walking into a store with about three coupons, and if I was lucky I would have four or five coupons. I would pay the $2.99 for the toothpaste and hand over my $.50 coupon. Now I wouldn't even dream of paying that much for toothpaste, deodorant, or shampoo. What I couldn't figure out is why I wasn't saving all the money that all the other couponers were.

My coupons came from the Sunday inserts and I always only had one of the coupons so I couldn't capitalize on a sale if something I needed was at a good price. My ahha moment came when my mom started giving me her coupons and then I had two of each coupon, and then I figured out if I bought the item while it was on sale and used a coupon it would make it an even better deal. I then started asking my family for their Sunday inserts if they weren't using them to get even more savings.

While I don't save the hundreds of dollars that we've all read about, we have started saving 10-25% off of our grocery bill by using coupons, watching sale prices, and shopping at other stores. Another goldmine for us that's worth mentioning that has helped reduce our grocery budget is by shopping at our local Aldi grocery store. Aldi provides a low price on staples that we use everyday and the majority of what we've purchased is the same or better quality than the name brand item that we would purchase at our local grocery store.