So . . . my experiment at couponing has brought me NO success and has been surprisingly time consuming and slightly depressing due to the lack of accomplishment.
First of all, it appears that Wegmans doesn't/only rarely publishes a weekly circular, so I couldn't stick by the guidelines I had set in my first post of only checking that store. Actually, after I found out that Wegman's doesn't have a circular (and therefore I couldn't really abide by my rules anyway), I checked MULTIPLE store flyers and had no success with ANY of them.
Turns out couponing is harder than it looks.
The best I did was find a box of garden pasta that I could get for 50¢, regularly priced at $1.79. But that was IT. I found a few items that would come in at around a dollar, which would be a nice savings, considering these were brand-name full-size items, but they were far from free or bargain-basement priced. Now, I was only working with one week's worth of coupons, which had already been clipped over by my mom, so I figured I was on a limited playing field, and would see what this Saturday and Sunday's paper had to offer in the way of new flyers and new coupons, on top of last week's coupons.
Even less than before.
This time, all I could find were those few items whose prices could be whittled down to a dollar or so, but nothing below that barrier. Even more frustrating was the fact that, for both these attempts, I wasn't even considering if I WANTED these items or not, I was simply checking the prices. The only things I ruled out were items that would be COMPLETELY useless to me, like dog food, baby diapers, and vitamins. Everything else was fair game.
And the terrible part is that this has been completely addicting. Perhaps because it appeals to my organizational nature, the idea of matching up the coupons with the sales to get the greatest return. Or maybe just because I get to play with scissors and paper (I did always like that part of preschool). Whatever the reason, it's good that the paper only comes once a week so that I'm limited that way.
But I have no idea how those people on TV do it. Guess it's just the magic of television.
2 comments:
I'm sure there is a tv show about this already, I know I've seen it on the news. Here in State College, a lot of the students or 20 somethings like to dumpster dive. It's the best way I've saved money on food and it's like a treasure hunt. There's certain things on the "do NOT take that out of a dumpster" list, but most of it is common sense if you know anything about waste and decomposition.
Not that i'm recommending this as a way to save on food products, especially during the summer months =( but just saying that there are ways out there to get lots of things at real good prices.
I'd also recommend shop lifting.
Cool. I've toyed with the idea of dumpster diving before, but never actually seriously looked into it. I don't really know if the area of the Lehigh Valley, being spread out and suburban, as opposed to State College being more town-ish, would make a difference in dumpster haulings.
Luckily, I'm not to the pont where I HAVE to coupon or dumpster dive to save change, but that doesn't mean I don't still think it's awesome.
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