CVS Shopping Trip: Check your Receipt!

Several months ago, my husband had some serious health issues.  He has heart problems and will probably have to have a transplant at some point in the future.  Anyway... this meant that my time to hunt and clip coupons went to the back burner while I just tried to keep things going with the him, work, and my family. He's been doing better now since before Christmas, so I've restarted my binder (see binder setup in January, 2012 blog).  I sure hated throwing out all those expired and unused coupons!!!  But the New Year is a good time to reboot.  I did my first shopping trip this past weekend and saved over 25%.  Not great by extreme couponing standards, but HEY, it's 25% that I was able to keep to pay other bills! More on that at the end.

An old high school friend just contacted me with the idea of starting a monthly meeting of local couponers to exchange extra coupons we do not use.  I love this idea and will let you know how it goes.

As for this past weekend's coupon/reward adventure, my one lesson to pass along is to CHECK YOUR RECEIPT AFTER EACH TRANSACTION!  I was shopping the ExtraBucks deals at CVS.  They had a Proctor & Gamble deal where after you spent a certain amount on PG products, you got $10 EB that you could apply to other purchases.  There was also one for Pepsi/Mars products for $10 EBs.  In the case of BOTH DEALS for some reason the register did not record the correct totals for those products and showed on the receipt that I still needed to purchase more items to get the deal, while if you compared the circular and the receipt, I had clearly met the requirements with the types/sizes/amount of products.  Luckily the store wasn't busy and and the cashier was lovely.  In the case of THREE transactions she had to call over the manager and override the register to make it print out my coupons for $10 EBs that I need to pay for my items in the fourth transaction.  She was extremely nice and understanding as was the manager.  YEA CVS!!!

P.S. - Although my CVS store was not very busy, I made sure to let other customers with smaller transactions go ahead of me before each of my transactions.  Please practice this courtesy if whatever store you are at has limited registers open.  Taking up a register for long periods of time while you get your coupons/deals straight is frustrating for others who may complain to management.  This can cause stores to change coupon/deal rules.  Don't be the obnoxious couponer.  I guess coupon/deal manners may be a good blog for the near future.

Couponing: Value Minded Resolution

My Resolution:  Use coupons on every grocery and health item shopping trip possible.  Around Thanksgiving I started gearing up to take a serious stab at couponing. I already have my binder started and have made a couple of test runs as I learned the finer points. They were very successful, so I intend to really focus on it this and report it here.  I don't intend to make this blog just about couponing in 2012, but I will include it as a feature.

These are some links that might help you if you want to get started with couponing or even if you already do it some:

"How to Organize Your Coupon Binder" (Krazy Coupon Lady, Heather Wheeler) NOTE: Instead of buying my binder and inserts, I lucked up on one at a yard sale where the guy was getting rid of his baseball card collection. Anyone into baseball cards? I have some from the 80's to go to a good home.  This is a picture of my binder.  I organize by sections in the grocery store.  Canned goods and dry goods first and moving to produce, meat, dairy, and frozen goods last since that is how I shop.  Here is a picture of my binder:

BEWARE of Coupon Clipping Services! If you're getting coupons just from newspapers or from some of the legitimate coupons online (which are free) and from manufacture websites, you are fine.. but don't pay for coupons! It is against the policy of coupon makers to sell coupons.  Watch here if you are interested:

This is one of the online coupon websites that is good:  http://www.shopathome.com/

Also, many local newspapers now over some of their coupons from the inserts online as well.  This one is from my local newspaper: http://www2.scnow.com/coupons/ and the online version of our paper also recommends http://www.dealtaker.com/ which has deals, promotions, etc. as well as coupons.