Adventures in Couponing

A few weeks ago, Jordan and I watched a documentary on TLC about extreme couponers, like get $400 worth of groceries for $26 extreme. One of the women actually dug through dumpsters to find coupons people had thrown out with their Sunday papers. Yikes. I've never really understood the big deal with coupons. I always just saw them as a way to make brand names more affordable, but since I'm not brand loyal and I think Western Family tastes just as good as anything else, why use coupons? The generics are usually cheaper anyway even with the coupons. However, can you imagine how sweet it would be to save like that?!?! (minus the dumpster-diving of course). I'm definitely going to need to work those kinds of miracles over the next four years while we're living on student loans. So when a friend in my ward hosted a Savvy Shopper party, I decided to see what all the coupon hype was about. I went, I learned and I decided to give it a try.

So here are the results of my first shopping trip to Rite-Aid. I would normally NEVER shop at Rite-Aid but evidently they have really great coupon deals and programs like UP Rewards (which is basically like getting cash back to use on your next purchase) and in-store rebates (which you get in the form of a check mailed to you at the end of each month). I signed up for the Sunday paper to get more coupons but haven't gotten it yet so I only used 8 coupons that I printed off the internet. Below is a picture of my haul:

2 pouches of Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie mix, 5 boxes of Kellogg's cereal, 2 bottles of Shout, 2 bottles of Drano (I have lots of hair), 2 packages of Hall's Cough drops, 2 boxes of cold medicine, 1 box of Chloraseptic throat lozenges and 1 box of contact lens solution

Total Retail Value: I have no idea :)

Total After Sales but Before Coupons: $43.86

Total After Coupons: $36.06

Total After Factoring in UP Rewards ($8) and Rebates ($17): $11.06

I could get used to this!