A good friend of mine challenged me to save her $20 on her grocery trip…without using ANY newspaper coupons OR printable coupons and purchasing everything on HER list. Challenge ACCEPTED.
Here’s the deal. My friend is busy. I mean, aren’t we all? She, like me, has very active kids and a full time job. She didn’t see the benefit of spending hours couponing to save a few dollars. HER WORDS, not mine!! Even though we have been friends for YEARS, she didn’t understand that there is not much time needed to save $$ when shopping. All she saw was what she watched on “Extreme Couponing” where people were spending hours clipping, planning, dumpster diving (yikes), and then spending hours driving around town to get every deal Y’all that is NOT the way I coupon. And I can still save big time at the store.
I thought I’d share how this played out.
Her rules were simple:
1) NO newspaper coupons (she doesn’t buy the paper)
2) NO printable coupons (no printer)
3) 30 minutes or less planning time
4) 30 minutes or less in the store
5) PUBLIX only (her closest store)
6) Buy everything on her list
To give you an idea of her list, she has 4 kids (teenagers) and 2 pets.
She gave me a list and said I could pick a similar brand if I found a better deal than her usual brand. There were 2 exceptions: Yoplait must be the yogurt and Nestle brand only for chocolate chips.
My super easy plan: I literally drove to the Publix parking lot, opened my Publix app to make a list using the weekly ad. Then I searched through the digital coupons and clipped those that applied. Took me about 8 minutes total….IN MY CAR!! Headed into the store.
Opened the app again. Opened the list I made in the car and made sure the coupons were visible as well. Filtered my list to show items in the order they are found in the store. No running back and forth across the store for me.
Shopping time including waiting on deli meat AND checkout line: 18 minutes!
Savings: $40.23 (Digital Coupons + in store sales)
Total back from iBotta app: $3.85
TOTAL SAVED: $44.08- 30% off the total!
Fetch Rewards Earned: 494 Points
Total planning & shopping time: 26 minutes
Takeaway: It took 26 minutes of my time (only 8 minutes planning!) to save $44.08 without using scissors or my printer!!! Imagine how much MORE could be saved with a little more effort. No excuses!!
Next challenge will be Winn Dixie. Next week’s shopping trip I will head to Winn Dixie with her list to see if it’s worth the extra miles.
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