My First Extreme Couponing Trip! 04/08/2011

I discovered that a lot of people sign up for some paid coupon clipping services...Or get coupon books from various sources.  Most of those sources include your weekend newspaper that we all know contains your grocery store's weekly circulars and TONS OF COUPONS!  However, we do not sign up for any of those things, so I rely all of my coupon gathering on just any free printable coupons I can find online.

Last week I decided that I had done enough research and gathered enough coupons to try out my first Extreme Couponing Trip.  I think that I picked a heck of week to try this out!  In my research I found that last week Price Chopper had a coupon for $5 off when you buy 10 Price Chopper brand items.  So as long as you stick to items that are around $.50 each,  you will end up with them for free or for dirt cheap.  There was also a coupon for a free Price Chopper brand box of cereal valued at $2.  With those two coupons in hand I went to the store.

When I got there, I scanned my Rewards Card into the coupon machine.  Every day (I have checked, you can only do it once a day no matter how many different Price Chopper locations you go to that day) that you go in to Price Chopper, you scan your Rewards Card and it prints you a random sheet of coupons.  In the past I always check the coupons but it has rarely been for anything I was going in to the store for.  This time happened to be my lucky day!  Out printed a coupon for $.50 off of 3 Price Chopper brand canned vegetables...Which I had already planned on buying at least 3 cans of Price Chopper brand vegetables to complete my 10 items.  So now with the additional unexpected $.50 coupon, I was able to buy 11 items and did not need to count the box of cereal as one of my 10 items. I walked up and down the aisles with my phone's calculator, a pen, and a piece of paper.  I guarantee that I was talking out-loud to myself and other customers probably thought I was insane.

The math I had done had assured me that my purchase was going to be so dirt cheap that I actually kind of wanted an audience.  But after walking around the store for over an hour, I did not want to wait in the long check-out lines.  So I went to one of the self-check-outs since there was no line.

FYI, Earlier in the week before I found those coupons, I planned on going in to the store with the intention of ONLY buying 1 box of Price Chopper brand pasta that was on sale for $1, to make for dinner that night.
What I walked out of the store was with the following:

• 1 Box Price Chopper Brand Cereal - $2.00
• 2 Cans of Price Chopper Brand canned Vegetables - $0.49 each
• 2 Cans of Price Chopper Brand canned Vegetables - $0.59 each
• 5 Price Chopper Brand Yogurts - $0.45 each
• 1 Box of Price Chopper Brand Pasta - $1.19 (Yes I messed up and accidentally got the one that wasn't on sale for $1)

Subtotal: $7.60 

My Price after $7.50 worth of coupons came off: $0.10

Had I realized I grabbed the wrong box of pasta, my total would have either been free or they would have owed me 9cents.  I am not sure if they actually pay you or not. 

Either way, I was so ecstatic about all of those groceries only costing me a dime that I didn't even notice my pasta mistake until later that night.  I found myself standing at the check-out counter grinning like an idiot, kind of looking around to see if anyone happened to see my wonderful purchase.  No one had.  Oh well, I had and I couldn't wait to tell the world about it!

I think one of the best things about the trip was that we needed all of those items.  None of them were going to be wasted.  Those were pretty much all items we would have been buying anyway.

I also found that I was on a bit of a 'high' from the excitement.  It lasted my car ride home, the whole time cooking dinner, to probably a few hours into the night.  I even told my husband I wanted to frame the receipt!  (Don't worry, I'm not really going to do that...But I haven't thrown it out yet either...)

I was so impressed with my purchase that I decided I had to go back to Price Chopper again the following day, because the Free Box of Cereal Coupon and the $5/10 PC items Coupons were going to expire the following day...And I just couldn't let them go to waste.

I was now begging to understand the 'rush' that all of those people on "Extreme Couponers" felt.