I thought it would be fun to do a quick comparison of what my grocery trips used to cost, versus what I’m spending now. I save most of my receipts, so I looked in my paperwork archive and pulled out a receipt from January 21st of this year – click here to view it. I started using coupons in February, after I discovered Hot Coupon World. So what did my grocery budget look like, pre-coupons?
For this one trip, the total was $68.01. And if you look at what I bought, you’ll see that this isn’t even enough to get us through the week, because I didn’t buy any milk or veggies, just for starters. In comparison, my budget for the entire month of November was $63.30 – and that’s the highest my monthly total has been since I started this blog. Just 11 months later, and the savings are dramatic.
It’s amazing to look at how much money I spent on certain items during that trip, and compare it with what I pay now. For example, on January 21st I paid $4 for 2 boxes of Quaker oatmeal. Last month I paid .84 cents for 12 boxes. During that January trip, I also spent $13.78 purchasing four 12-packs of Sierra Mist and Canada Dry soda. After discovering coupons, I got 42 bottles of Sprite for free. In January, I spent $5.50 on yoghurt. Since then, I’ve gotten lots of yoghurt free or dirt cheap. But the most surprising comparison for me is the cost of fruit. Since discovering coupons, I’ve been astonished to find that you can save big on produce with coupon strategies, too. During January’s trip I spent $4.81 purchasing a Papaya and 1.67 pounds of bananas. In September, I paid $2.06 for $55 worth of groceries, which included bananas, 2 pounds of grapes, 1 head of broccoli, 1 carrot, plus all my other groceries. What a difference a year makes!
To those of you reading this that are just starting out, I hope that this gives you some inspiration and encouragement as to how much money can be saved using coupons. I know that reading about other people’s savings on Hot Coupon World really motivated me to use coupons, and illustrated how worthwhile it was.
