Grand Total: $0.32!! Woo-hoo!

Thanks Julie for pointing out the Eggos! Check out her awesome couponing trip HERE! And don’t miss even more deals from my first trip.

Eggo French Toast Sticks & Mini Muffins- $1.67

Use $.55/1 from 4/6 RP

Total: $.02

Luzianne Tea (24 ct.)- $1.59

Use $.60/1 from 4/27 S

Total: FREE plus $.21 overage!

Natures Own Bagels- $1.99

Use $.55/1 from 5/11 S

Total: $.34

Gum Toothbrush- $1.99

Use $.75/1 from 4/20 RP

Total: FREE plus $.26 overage!

MY TOTAL: $0.92!!

Here’s what I did:

McCormick Grill Mates- B1G1 ($0.75 each)

05-04 RP: $.25/1

Total: FREE

KC Masterpiece BBQ Sauce- $1.50

04-13 RP: $.50/1

Total: FREE

Barilla Pasta- $1.00

05-04 S: $.50/1

Total: FREE plus $.50 overage!

GUM Toothbrush- $1.99

04-20 RP: $.75/1

Total: FREE plus $.26 overage!

Daisy Sour Cream (8 oz)- $1.00

03-16 S1: $.50/1

Total: FREE plus $.50 overage!

Lawry’s Marinade- B1G1 ($1.64 each)

04-06 RP: $.50/1

Total: $0.14

Special K Bliss- B1G1 ($1.75 each)

03-30 RP: $.55/1

Total: $0.10

Ortega Salsa- 2/$4.00

04-20 S: $.75/2

Total: $1.75/2 (or $0.87 each)

Snyder’s Pretzel Nibblers- $2.50

05-11 S: $.75/1

Total: $0.25

Eagle Brand Milk- $2.49

02-03 RP: $.35/1

03-09 RP: $.55/1 (my insert didn’t have this one, but some did.)

Total (using $.35 coupon): $1.44 (not the best deal, but good with added overage!)

*UPDATE: Check out even more deals I found.

Anybody else find any great deals to share??

For those of you with a Harris Teeter around, they are having Triple Coupons this week; Thursday, Friday and Saturday!! I can’t wait to go tomorrow. Hope I find lots of good deals to post about! If anybody else goes, I’d love to hear what deals you found!

Have you ever gone couponing, and upon returning home realized that one or more of your coupons were not counted off your total?

This has happened to me so many times, you’d think by now I would have learned to check my receipt before I left the parking lot. Well, I guess I haven’t learned yet. I went to Walmart yesterday to get a few good deals. When the cashier rung me up, I gave her all of my coupons, and thought that they went through fine. The total sounded high to me, but I was in a hurry to get out of there, so I just threw the receipt in the bag and went on my way. As I was driving home I started thinking about my total, and as I calculated in my head what my cost should have been I became concerned that my coupons weren’t counted. As soon as I got home I pulled out my receipt and looked at it. Sure enough, 2 of my coupons were not on there. I was so upset! My savings lost came up to over $4! Now, I don’t know about you but that’s a lot to me!

I decided to call the store and speak with a manager. I explained to him that I had given the cashier my coupons, but the discount did not show up on the receipt. I told him the register number, and info off of the receipt. I asked him what he could do about it. I was surprised at his helpfulness! He told me that he would go to the register, find the coupons, and take the cash value of them out of the drawer to keep for me. All I had to do was go back to the customer service counter where they had an envelope with my money in it waiting for me. He told me to just come back whenever I got a chance. I went today since I was going out that way anyway, and with no problems I got my money back.

There are two morals to this story:

1. ALWAYS check your receipt before you leave the parking lot!

2. IF you notice a mistake after you’ve already left the store, don’t just let it go. Call them, and see what they can do to help you. Sure glad I did!

First thing’s first, where do I get all of my coupons?? Well, I don’t subscribe to a paper, but I know people who do and are more than happy to pass along the coupons. So, I get coupons from family members. I also put an ad on Freecycle and Craig’s List asking for any unwanted coupons, and much to my surprise, a wonderful older woman responded and has been keeping her coupons for me for a couple months now. What a blessing! I will occasionally buy a Sunday paper if I know it’s going to be worth it for me. Just ask around, I’m sure there are people in your life who are just throwing away those valuable coupons every week!

Okay, so here’s the real question:

Once you have all of those coupons piled up, how do you organize them??

I used to be one of those spending hours clipping all of the coupons, then filing them one by one into my small, expandable coupon file. Talk about exhausting! I had better ways to spend my time! So, I figured out a few helpful tricks…

• When I get my coupons, I write the date on the top of the insert.

• Next, I put the coupons by date into individual clear sheet protector sleeves in a 3-ring binder.

• You may be wondering now, how I ever find the coupons I’m looking for. Good question. Well, Couponmom.com has a virtual coupon organizer which will tell you which coupons were in which insert, depending on your state. If you haven’t signed up for this free website, do it now ! It will save you TONS of time and effort! Imagine, never clipping unnecessarily again! Then all you have to do is search for a particular coupon, and if there was one that hasn’t expired yet in any of your inserts, it will tell you which insert to look in.

For example: If I needed a coupon for Huggies. I would just go to Couponmom’s Newspaper Coupon Database, find my state, then type in “Huggies”. The search would bring up all coupon inserts that had a Huggies coupon inside. It would look like this:

03-16S 2 04-20 Huggies Diapers any $2.00 1

Meaning that the coupon could be found in the March 16^th , Smart Source (2^nd issue) insert. The coupon expires on April 20^th , and it’s good for $2.00 off any one Huggies Diaper product.

Pretty handy, huh?!

• All I have to do is find where the coupon is, pull out that particular insert from my chronologically organized binder, and clip just what I need. EASY!

• When my binder gets filled up, I will go through my older inserts. When most or all of the coupons have expired, I will empty that sleeve, cut out any good coupons that are left, and put them into my little expandable coupon organizer.

• My expandable file has sections which are labeled with different categories: canned food, frozen foods, medicine, baby, cleaning products, hair, makeup, etc…

• I also file any other loose coupons I may get in the mail, off of products, or printed off of the computer.

• Now, when I get a FREE w/ rebate type of coupon, I don’t want to forget about it, so I will clip it out, and file it in the front of my binder using a baseball card sleeve.

• I also keep my store coupons in the baseball card sleeve, so they don’t get mixed in with all of the others.

• I keep my CVS ecb’s in the pocket in the front of my binder so that I don’t misplace them.

So, there you have it. This is what works for me , and I’m telling you, it’s a real time and money saver!! Hope this inspires some of you to get your coupons more organized, and working for you more efficiently!