Shopping with coupons

In the spirit of getting a good deal, I went shopping at Harris Teeter during day 1 of their triple coupon event. Harris Teeter will triple coupons with a face value of $0.99 or less up to 20 coupons per VIC card, per household, per day. The only Harris Teeter in town is normally fairly busy, but today it was a nearly full parking lot.

Today I armed myself with a plan of what I wanted, sort of.  I prepped a list of sale items and coupons for those items and good deal coupons, which took me about 30 minutes.  I showed up with 14 coupons prepped for shopping. Of those 14, 2 were for items I discovered that Harris Teeter doesn't carry them in this particular store.


I shopped and noticed all the isles filled with coupon-ers that were using large binders full of coupons. I use the low-key approach, small, collapsible container that fits in my pocket and can hold 1,000 coupons. I used an envelope with the planned use coupons with a list the planned purchases which doubles as a separator to keep the claimed coupons away from the unclaimed coupons. When I went to the checkout, I counted that I used 19 of the possible 20 coupons per day.


-----My Savings Breakdown-----
Sales and VIC discounts: $27.82
Manufactures Coupons: $10.30
Triple Coupon Bonus: $20.60

Catalinas received:
$1.00 off 1 Coffee-Mate natural bliss
$1.00 off 3 General Mills Big G cereals
$1.50 off your next purchase at Harris Teeter compliments of Hamburger Helper.


My shopping doesn't focus on getting getting a bunch of free items and Harris Teeter does not allow coupon overage. I focus and using coupons for items that we will use in a short time span. Translation: I don't do stockpiles or clear the shelf shopping.