OK, so I think I finally found a purpose for posting regularly on my otherwise completely useless blog: tallying up the awesome savings my illustrious spouse achieves by clipping and using coupons. She's been kicking so much grocery-chain rear lately, we decided to track it and total it up, just to satisfy our own curiosity.
Then I thought, "Why not broadcast it to the world?" (Or in this case, to my 3.6 readers.) It seems like folks at FiLife are always asking how much someone can really save by clipping coupons. Well, I figured I could provide an example for one family for one year. You'll have to take us for our word, but I don't have much incentive to overblow it. Here's the ground rules:
- My wife keeps her regular coupon-clipping routine: about an hour a week, mostly out of the Sunday paper circulars or what junk mailers send us. We don't have luck with printers, so we don't hunt for them online (sorry).
- We only count our three regular grocery destinations: Target, Cub Foods, and Rainbow Foods. No Dollar Store, Savers, or other places where beef jerky is prominently displayed.
- We trust whatever the store tells us on the receipt that we "saved" in dollars at the bottom of the receipt. This will count in-store specials and stuff, which might over-estimate our total, but I figure that's balanced out by skipping the smaller stores where we sometimes shop.
I'll post the results for each month here, although there will be a slight delay. The results for January, 2010: an average savings of 29% of the bill for a total of $152.99. Seriously.
Do I have an incredible wife, or what? The only downside to this that I can see is she'll want half the money back in spa treatments, and I'll have already spent it on Summit Horizon Red.
