To begin our transformation to becoming strategic shoppers, my husband and I went on the website couponmom.com which lays out the whole plan for you in three separate e-books. They are all free on the site.

The basic premise is buying items you use when they are at their lowest price, then combining the use of your supermarket’s weekly sales circular with store and manufacturer coupons. So, not only do you get the sale price, you get even more money off by using the coupons.

The site suggests you start tracking prices so you know when something is at its lowest point. We are still in the process of doing that – but we were able to put the other principles into practice right away.

The site makes it so easy for you. It has a database that outlines what’s in the store circular, and lists where you can find related coupons.

It took my husband and I about 30-45 minutes to make up our list of things we needed to buy and then check the database.

We lost out on some potential savings because we only had a few weeks worth of Red Plum coupon circulars, which come in the mail, and we didn’t have any SmartSource, which come in the Sunday paper. (As we’ve learned – if you are going to do this, you’ll need to subscribe and you’ll want to save all of the coupons for several weeks.)

But here’s the best part about this system -  you only clip out the coupons you need for that week.  Over time you’ll have a collection of coupons, then when something goes on sale, the database will tell you which week to find a related coupon. It even tells you how much you will save.

This is welcome news to you if you are anything like me. My past coupon clipping attempts have been efforts in futility. I would clip a bunch of coupons, and either forget I clipped them due to lack of organization; or end up spending more on a product I only bought because I had a coupon.

So – after putting together our list, and gathering up our coupons we headed to the supermarket.

Here are some of the savings we found:

Bacon was on sale buy one get one free. We also found a store coupon on Shaw’s website – for $1 off/2 packages. We printed two of those coupons and bought 4 pounds of bacon. Two of them were free, then we got $2 off the remaining price. Since bacon freezes, it was a good buy.

Same for Ken’s salad dressing.

It was also two for one – combined with two store coupons worth $1 each – we bought 4 bottles of dressing for what we’d normally pay for one bottle.

Our real steal was with cereal.

Shaw’s had a had a deal of buy 10 boxes of cereal for $25. With most boxes of cereal running $4 to $5 bucks -that’s normally a great deal in its own right.

But get this – the store also had a coupon in the circular – buy $25 worth of cereal and get $10 off. We combined that with another $2 in coupons and basically got $50 worth of Kellogg’s cereal  for $13!

When all was said and done – we saved $122 off our grocery bill and earned a $7 coupon for a future shopping trip and a coupon for up to 3 gallons milk for free – and we’re still rookies!

My first strategic shopping receipt - $122 saved!!

I never left the grocery store with such a smile on my face. I can’t wait to do it again – to see how much we save then.

I’ll keep you all posted!