I just cut my grocery bill in half!

I love saving money. I mean, obviously! I particularly enjoy saving money on groceries. So I opt to shop at Giant Eagle. At first glance GE can seem expensive. Their regular prices can seem jacked up a bit. And that may well be true, but if you shop like me, you can cut your bill in half!

Today I made a quick trip to GE. I only had about $50 budgeted for the trip, so I figured out some deals by matching sale prices at GE what coupons are available in my coupon database. Specifically things we actually needed: yogurt, cereal, cheese, creamer etc. I came up with a trip totaling $68 after coupons. I knew that just wouldn’t cut it. I knocked some things off the list and went shopping anyways.

I figured that I would surely decide not to get something on my list and it would keep under the $50 mark. I ended up ditching a cereal deal.

At checkout, my total came to some $93. I held my breath as I watched the cashier scanning each of my coupons. Just hoping I’d calculated correctly. I hate that. Getting it wrong.

But I did it! I got my total from over $90 down to $43 and change!

How do I save so much?

Well, firstly I only buy what’s on sale. If it’s not on sale, I’ll wait. Then when it’s on sale, I’ll buy extra if it’ll keep. If I really need it, I’ll use the iOS app called Flipp to find it on sale near me and pick it up there. With this point, also make sure to have a member card at whatever your store is, if it has a card. These don’t cost a thing, fit right on your key ring and save you loads just scanning it! This alone got my total down from $93 down to $70 something.

Secondly, if it’s on sale, I’ll find a coupon that goes with it. This is like doubling my savings. And speaking of doubling, grocery stores often double coupons. My Giant Eagle doubles coupons that are 99 cents or less. So a $.75 off coupons becomes a whopping $1.50 off! See how that could exponentially add up to huge savings?! So combining sale price with a coupon (preferably a $.75 to $.99 value amount that will double) you can really add up. Coupons can be printed at home from coupons.com or you can get them in your Sunday paper. I subscribe to the paper via Groupon but prefer to print my coupons.

So using my first point, I got the bill down about $20 but then using my coupons, I got the total down another $28! To my wonderful $43 under budget amount. I was so pleased!

If you’d like to see everything I got, I created a Periscope of the breakdown and what I scored. You can watch it here.

Here’s a quick breakdown off the top of my head:

• GoGurt 2 for $4 used $.75 off 2 printable coupon which doubled to $1.50 off 2 = $1.25 each
• Simply Lemonade $2.50 used $1 off eOffer
• Krave Cereal $1.99 used $1 off 2 printable coupon = $1.50 each
• El Monterey burritos $1 each, used $1 off 3 printable coupon = $.67 each
• Kraft Cheese 4 for $10 used $.75 off 1 = $1 each
• Zone Perfect bars $1.25 each used $.50 off 1 printable coupon, which doubled to $1 off 1 = $.25 each
• Wishbone Salad Dressing $1.50 used $.75 off one, which doubled to $1.50 off 1 = FREE!
• Kraft BBQ sauce $1.5o used $.55 off 1 printable coupon = $.40 each
• French’s Spicy Brown Mustart $1.50 used $.50 off 1 printable coupon = $.50 each
• Land O Frost lunch meat $4.49 used $.75 off 1 coupon from the paper, which doubled to $1.50 off 1 = $2.99 each
• Toaster Strudels $2 each used $1 off 1 printable coupon = $1 each
• And I’m sure I’m missing something! See more in the video on PeriScope 🙂

Do you use coupons? Why or why not?