Ohhhh man.
There comes a point (several times) in every couponer's quest for savings that they just get kinda burnt out. It's hard walking past all sorts of good stuff because it's not on sale and you don't have a coupon for it. You want those Pepperidge Farm cookies but they never seem to go on on sale and you haven't seen a coupon in forever. You have a serious craving for Manwich and it's full price. You're tired of keeping up with what's on sale which week and all those coupons to lug around and...and....
I haven't hit that point. Andy has. And for this evening's trip to the grocery store I said "screw coupons" beyond two specific deals I wanted to get. It was a bit of a shock at the checkout. We didn't even get that much stuff which made the total even worse. But....this is why I do what I do.
We got all sorts of garbage. We got the big humungo box of Crispix for $5.89 (!!!) - no coupons. We got knockoff Bailey's to put in our eggnog for $10 - no coupon. We got Manwich and Pepperidge Farm cookies - no coupons. It was $58 when the coupons I did have were scanned through.
*sigh*
Shelf price $96.94
Total $58.56
Rewards earned $7, plus $20 P&G rebate
Out of pocket $31.56
On the way to the car, Andy said "Wow, that was, uh, kind of expensive."
He's apparently gotten just as used to paying $2 cash for a cartload of stuff as me, and I didn't have a whole lot of OYNOs to use this trip. But what can ya do? Sometimes you have to go a little nuts.
This trip finished up everything needed for the $20 P&G rebate which makes it a little more palatable and, really, when I look at our monthly spending I'm still amazed. As always, this covers all trips to the grocery store and all three drug stores.
For the month of November:
Merchandise value - $1,785.89
Total cost after sales & coupons - $652.19 ($467 paid in rewards)
Rewards earned - $488.05
Rebates earned - $75.96
Out of pocket - $88.18 for a savings of $1,697.71, or 95%!!!
This covers not only our daily food consumption (plus adding to the stockpile) and daily health, beauty, and cleaning goods (plus adding to the stockpile); it also includes about 90% of our Christmas shopping. The only things we have left to get are a couple small gift cards for my niece & older nephew and a savings bond for my baby nephew.
This month we got $250 more in merchandise for $200 less out of pocket versus October.
Today's trip to Giant Eagle accounted for nearly 30% of our cash spending for the entire month. Ouch!
I'm expecting next month's numbers to not be quite as impressive; the sales and coupons slow down, there's all the holiday hullabaloo going on, and I might just get lazy once or twice. That's okay. I know I don't need to buy any toothpaste or shampoo!
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