Anyone that knows me knows that I’m notoriously cheap. They don’t have adjectives that adequately describe my cheapness.

Nothing gets me knotted up like hearing a radio ad for Kroger or Marsh offering triple coupons. There’s a method to the madness, and I’ll walk you through my procedure. I am the Yoda of couponing. My best-ever Olympic couponing moment was a summer day three years ago when THE UNCANNY eX-wife and I bought two heaping grocery carts full of Coke screw-top six packs and after ringing us up, the store owed us 37 cents. I thought the cashier was gonna have a meltdown, so we bought a pack of Tic Tacs to avoid her trying to figure out what to do with a negative total.

Kim has been a party to (or a victim of) my coupon madness many times, but isn't a total convert. She's still a bit of a Brand name queen.

But I digress; here is how I pulled off my latest Kroger couponing adventure.

To begin, you have to have a home store to base your strategy on. This needs to be the store you go to most. Buy two flexible multi-pocket envelopes and go to the store. Use one pocket to represent each aisle in the order you like to travel the store. Write down the headings in the envelope to match all contents of the aisles. My first slot in the envelope is "bread, produce, deli, popcorn, seafood" because that’s whats in the first aisle. The second is "candy", the third is "razors, hair care and dental," etc.

Then every Sunday without fail you have to buy a paper and clip coupons. Clip everything. Do not limit yourselves to things you use or need or even like. Forget that. You're in a new paradigm now. I buy tons of cat food. I have no cat. I buy baby products, but my son is now 13.

Common sense must go out the window. You’ll see why as we go.

The other thing you need to forget about is a grocery list. You only think you need those things. The only thing allowed on grocery lists are items that rarely or never have coupons, such as:

Beer

Sugar

Milk

Lunchmeat

That’s it. Nothing else. Your kid likes Go-Gurt? Screw that. You wife's gotta have only the Security Maxi-pads? ( I assume approved by the Department of Homeland Security) Tough. We are no longer brand-name whores.

Now start at the beginning of the store. Today's deal is fifty cent triple coupons and dollar double coupons. That means a coupon worth 50 cents is now worth $1.50. A coupon worth 55 cents is $1.10 and coupons worth a dollar are now worth $2 dollars--are you still with me?

My son Alec and I started shopping at about 4 PM.
We’re looking for what I call the magic price. The magic price is $2. Any item priced $2 or less has potential to be free. It’s okay to pay a little for each item, but my ultimate goal is to pay about 30 cents for most items, though there are several that I will never pay even a penny for because I have accumulated so much. These items are always free. Only a sucker pays for:

Toothpaste

Toothbrushes

Disposable razors

Shaving cream

Shampoo

BBQ sauce

Soap

Conditioner

Frank's Red Hot Sauce

Yellow Mustard

They are always and will always be FREE. Stop buying them at ANY price.
I have shelves and shelves of this stuff that won't fit in my kitchen.

If you really want to buy one, come to my garage. I will sell you any of the above cheaper than the grocery store. At present count, I have 39 bottles of BBQ sauce,
plus dozens of everything on that list. I cannot use them as fast as I get them for free. (And yes, I donate to the food bank on occasion.)

I dispatch Alec an aisle ahead to scout out the magically priced items.

“Jolly Time popcorn, Wonder bread and Pepperidge Farm products,” he informs me, are all magic priced. That means they have the potential to be free.

I tell him to ask at the deli what the cheapest Lorraine cheese is priced.

After scouting the above coupons we find that Jolly Time popcorn and Pepperidge Farm products have 50 cent coupons and will now be 79 cents and 50 cents respectively. Lorraine baby swiss is on sale for $3.99 a pound and a ½ pound of it will be free with my dollar off coupon doubled to $2.

All of that comes to only a $1.29. A buck twenty-nine for a loaf of Pepperidge Farm cinnamon swirl bread, A 3 pack of microwave popcorn and a half-pound of fresh sliced deli cheese. Beat that!

Ok, I will.

The candy aisle was a bust, but the Aqua Fresh toothbrushes were a motherload of goodness. As I mentioned before, I have a shoebox full of toothbrushes.
Enough to last me longer than my teeth are sure to be in my head (at least that's what my dentist threatens). Why buy them? Well, the Aqua Fresh toothbrushes are on closeout for 98 cents. My dollar off coupon is doubled to two dollars. Kroger is now paying me $1.02 to buy them (limit two). Now my total purchase is negative 75 cents.

Those toothbrushes, cat food, Franks Red Hot sauces, BBQ sauces etc. are paying for the things on my VERY SHORT list of non-coupon items-- especially beer and meat--both important parts of my food pyramid.

This cycle repeats itself over every aisle. It’s a slow process, but 3 hours later (that’s the only drawback) we have a mounded full cart of groceries and a heaping pocketful of coupons. We head to the check out.

Choosing your checker is vitally important. High school kids do not care about their job, so shop while they are working. Those checkers the rest of you complain about--the ones that talk to their friends while waiting on you and can’t make change in their head. They are your friends.

They have no patience for double-checking the occasional expired coupon or scrutinizing that coupon that says “12 oz size ONLY” when you know you damn well bought the 10 oz size. Some old biddy cashier who looks like the body double for Estelle Getty will scrutinize every coupon and re-read the tape--very annoying. Find a good cashier (and by good I mean “dumber than a box of hammers.”) It’s too bad Wal-Mart doesn’t double coupon, because all their cashiers are pretty dim.

Alec and I proceed to the check out. I let two or three people go ahead of me while I unload, because once she starts on my coupons it will take her a half-hour to ring me out. Finally I have her start on my stuff and she rings everything up. Be sure to watch the screen as she rings it up. Kroger will give you an item for free if it rings wrong so if you catch it it's worth watching for. I usually catch at least one a month. This is best on the day prices change over (Thursday).

After she rings everything, give her your Kroger card and coupons.

Then, step back and behold the magic.

Tonight our order came to $172 for an overflowing cart of groceries.

After my coupons were subtracted, the grand total I wrote my check for was $62.40!

Posted by wayneb at February 9, 2006 10:12 PM