Adventures in Couponing

So I have been reading Kelleigh Ratzlaff's blog and she has inspired me in a few ways. One of which is to try my hand at couponing again. I did it when Travis and I were first married, and usually saved 35-50% off of my bill. That was without buying a member ship to any of the pay coupon sites too. The best I ever did was 75% off of my total once. That receipt stayed tacked up on the fridge for a LONG time. :)

Anyway on my last trip to Costco, I was appalled at how much my bill was. I thought I shopped at Costco to save money? I did the math and figured out that I was spending WAY too much money on meat there. With exception of ground  turkey, I buy only frozen meat products at Costco.  The Kirkland brand ground beef has always been decent to eat. I forget right now what the meat to fat ratio is, but something is telling me it is 91/9. The price went up recently and it is now $3.25 a pound for FROZEN GOODNESS ONLY KNOWS WHAT THEY MIXED IN THE CHUB ground beef.

The Kirkland brand boneless skinless chicken breasts have previously always been good. But the last two bags have been VERY chewy no matter which way I prepare them. So the quality has gone down due I am sure to whatever non-organic processing method they are using on it. The price of that has steadily gone up too and this last time it contributed to my over large bill.

DON"T EVER BUY THE KIRKLAND FROZEN GROUND TURKEY!!! Ground turkey is not supposed to be spongy and dripping out moisture when you defrost it. I still have a bag with 4 chubs of it in my garage if someone would like to do an experiment to find out what the heck is in the frozen ground turkey there. I am not sure what the price per pound for the fresh ground turkey breast is there, but I do know that when the similar product is on sale at Vons, it is priced competitively.

Now of course on the last trip I stocked up on all three, so I did not buy any this week at Vons.

So back to Kelleigh. She posts these crazy blog posts with pictures where she gets $50.00 worth of groceries for $15.00. So I decided to try coupons again. I called Ralphs and Vons and got my actual club card numbers. Then I went to their web sites and registered my club cards. Both stores have an area on their web site where you can pick manufacturer e-coupons that you can load on your club card and use with newspaper coupons. Vons also has a couple of other E-Coupon sites on their site where you can register your club card number and to get more E-Coupons.

I have twice now gone shopping at Vons. The first time I saved 48% off of my bill and tonight I saved 49% off of my bill. Both times I only had the e-coupons and consulted the Vons weekly ad to see what was on sale. I also grabbed a few in store coupons. I am kicking myself that I did not get a Sunday paper yesterday, because I missed those coupons. (Anyone local have their coupons to spare?)

So what did I get? I got two cartons of strawberries for .99 cents each. Alton will be thrilled tomorrow morning when he finds them. Avacados were .99 cents each, so we will be using those tomorrow night when we have skirt steak fajitas. Speaking of the skirt steak, I had a $2 off any $10 meat purchase, so that e-coupon went to the meat. (I don't think Kelleigh would approve of how much I paid for the meat, but Alton loves steak and I wanted fajitas. LOL)

I had a $1 off e-coupon for Cascadian Farms organic cereal. They were on sale for $3.29 and one of the boxes had a $2.00 off coupon. Plus I had a $2 Catalina I earned last week for buying the same cereal with the same coupons. So I got two boxes of organic cereal for $1.58. I am sure there was a coupon in the paper too, so I might have been able to get them for free. I did earn another $2 Catalina for next week. (Does ANYONE know why they call them Catalinas?)

We don't generally buy taquitos. But the box of 60 was on sale for 9.99 and I had a $3 e-coupon and a $3 off coupon  that was in the weekly ad. So the $11 box of taquitos became $3.99. The make a fun lunch every once in a while for my rice and bean loving child. It's something he can dip. ;)
Classico spaghetti sauce was $1.45 if you bought 3. I bought 3. Starbucks has new ice creams... so there was a $2 off any two Starbucks ice creams. They were on sale and I had some sort of coupon. So two pints of yummy ice cream for under $3? Yes please.

They had GREAT prices on several produce items we eat a lot of. Cara Cara oranges (THE BEST!) were 99 cents a pound, so were broccoli crowns and bagged fresh spinach. Those prices are even cheaper than the farmer's market around here. They were out of the spinach, so I remembered to get a rain check.

This will be an interesting experiment. We don't eat a lot of processed food and there are certain things my DH just won't eat. Alton is FORBIDDEN to eat kids sugar cereal, so I won't be utilizing those sort of coupons. And I don't know if Travis will allow me to build a hoarding pantry like so many crazy coupon ladies seem to do. But I am going to try. I will let you know how it goes.

I am not yet convinced. For certain things, Trader Joe's is just better and or cheaper. For instance, Vons does not carry yogurt that is sweetened with cane juice instead of something artificial or high fructose corn syrup. Staple items like frozen peas, corn, and spinach are still cheaper at Trader Joes. Even the national brands with a coupon are more expensive than TJs. Also, with at least the Green Giant veggies, there were no plain veggies for the brand I had a coupon and e-coupon for. They all had some butter or cheese sauce slopped on them, which while tasty, kind of defeat the purpose of eating vegetables in the first place, you know what I mean?