Made a great connection thru a yardsale!

[Beachkid23]

Two weeks ago I met a lady at a yard sale and she had a lot of food for sale. See had like two dollars a box, all kinds of other stuff crackers cookies just really cheap so I asked her how she got it all. So after talking to her for about a half hour I went back to her house couple days later and she showed me her coupon trick. Now I normally don't have the patience for all this especially have so much stuff to get online. I've gone shopping with her twice and I don't understand where she gets all the coupons, but for the first time in our lives we have extra food and it's wonderful!



And that's not even a picture of the freezer or the pantry with juice in it! Let's just say I'll be helping her around her house for this favor. It's tough to feed six people in the house!

Next week she wants me to go alone. I see an epic fail coming in my future!

 

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[diggummup]

I've always wondered how those couponers can buy $287.59 worth of food for $14.82 with .25 cents off coupons myself. What's the trick anyway? I must be missing something.

 

[Beachkid23]

I've always wondered how those couponers can buy $287.59 worth of food for $14.82 with .25 cents off coupons myself. What's the trick anyway? I must be missing something.

I spent more like $70 so I wish it was 14 bucks! But I'm not sure yet she just gets them and takes me with her. It's like I'm going grocery shopping with my mom except for she's 2 years younger than I am! I'll try to find out where she gets them but I'm very happy at the moment. The original bill the first time was 280 and after the Coupons was $64

 

[clovis97]

I've always wondered how those couponers can buy $287.59 worth of food for $14.82 with .25 cents off coupons myself. What's the trick anyway? I must be missing something.

In essence, you are matching up a coupon with a killer sale. The store doubles or triples the value of the coupon, making it an unbelievable deal.

Let's say a grocer has Club crackers on sale for 2 for $3. That is a great buy these days for Keebler brand. Use a $1 off 2 crackers coupon. The value of the coupon doubles to $2. When it is said and done, you bought 2 boxes of crackers for $1.

$3.00 for two boxes of crackers
-1.00 Coupon
-1.00 (When coupon is doubled)
_____
$1.00 final cost for two boxes of crackers

Mind you, serious couponing is hard work. Most people either can't believe the incredible deals.

There are about 80 billion blogs and websites devoted to couponing, and they have the easy 'match ups' listed for you every week.

You guys are lucky to still have double and triple coupons in FL. Nearly all of the grocery stores quit doubling here, so most of the deals, like getting 2 weeks of groceries for free, is over.

Publix is an awesome store, I am told, for the deals. Wish that we had Publix here!

Also check CVS, Wags, and Rite-Aid. They can give some killer deals on occasion, but not like they used to. I once scored 41 high quality shampoos at CVS for free. Yes, totally for free. Yes, 41 bottles. Not a typo. 41. Talk about a blessing that I am thankful for!!!!!

 

[blindbug]

There's also a not-so-nice way people use coupons to score these insane deals. That one goes such that when you see a coupon, the code on the back is for a particular UPC familly. The coupon itself is for Crackers, which at Kroger is: 09876543210 and at Piggly Wiggly is 09876543230, and so on (because some stores have their own UPC needs). Well, some of these extreme couponers actually take the $2 off a large pack of ritz and apply it instead to the $2.25 small box of Ritz... who's UPC is 09876543220... where the last (3) digits are the same, it is in the same family and thus the coupon applies, because the scanning system only reads out a certain number of digits on the UPC. If you have a limit 4 coupon and you apply it to the package that is 1/4 the size/cost, you can end up basically quadrupling your coupon value on the same amount of product.

Technically, this form of couponing is fraud, though you are still within the system that is setup. For a long time, the people you saw on those extreme coupon shows on TLC were using this tactic until someone got called out on it. This tactic is still being used, but on the down-low and stores typically don't notice it.

 

[Tallone]

Publix is an awesome store, I am told, for the deals. Wish that we had Publix here!

Publix is awesome. And not just for deals. Their tag line is, "Where shopping is a pleasure". I know that's a slogan and every big company has a slogan. The difference is Publix lives it. Their stores are spotlessly clean ALWAYS. Every single person on their staff is unfailingly pleasant, friendly, and goes out of their way to be helpful. The very few times we have had a problem with a product or a situation, management has solved it promptly and pleasantly.

I sound like a PR flack for Publix! Seriously, I've done my grocery shopping at Publix for 20+ years but I've been in lots of grocery stores in my town and other towns. Nobody does it like Publix. My daughter recently moved to from Florida to South Carolina. The town she moved to has another grocery store near her place but she drives to the other side of town to go to Publix because she likes them so much.

Hang in there, Clovis, Publix has been expanding. Maybe they will reach your part of the country soon.

 

[BigWaveDave]

Honey Boo Boo's mom is an extreme couponer, so I've heard.

 

[NJcigarman]

There is no extreme couponing in my State NJ. Everyone has an EBT card they laugh at coupons.

 

[clovis97]

Sometimes the stores will run promotions on top of already outstanding prices.

Let's say that a store has crackers on sale at two boxes for $3. Sometimes, they will also have a deal, run in conjunction with that sale, like "Buy $10 worth of Keebler crackers, and get $3 off your bill instantly."

So, the deal works like this:

Buy 8 boxes of crackers @ $1.50 each.

$12.00 for the 8 boxes of crackers
-3.00 instantly off your bill
-4.00 off with 4 $1 off 2 coupons
-4.00 in doubled coupons
_____
$1.00 total cost for 8 boxes of crackers.

Of course, this is a hypothetical deal, created to show how it works. These deals typically have very short windows, so you have to move quickly to get the deal.

We don't get many deals like that in our area any more, but back in the Golden Age of coupons, we got deals like that all of the time.

One of the last deals that I got, a local grocer was running a similar deal on Ragu. I can't remember the exact specifics, but a jar of Ragu was about 35 cents, and when you bought 2 jars, you got a free box of store brand frozen garlic bread. I bought about 70 jars of Ragu, and had so much frozen garlic bread that I was calling all of my friends and family giving it away.

Now, before you think I am crazy...and NO, I AM NOT A PREPPER TYPE, we use about 3 jars of spaghetti sauce each week, and I split the 70 jars with my mom, and a few went to my sister. The Ragu had expiration dates extending about two years. At the time, Ragu was about $2 a jar at the store, so each time we used a jar, we were saving $1.60. So, in all, I think we kept 48 jars, which saved us about $79 in about 16 weeks time, not to mention all of the free garlic bread, normally priced about $3 a box.

 

[dejapooh]

There is no extreme couponing in my State NJ. Everyone has an EBT card they laugh at coupons.

Yes, I am sure they are overjoyed that they qualify for food stamps...

 

[2ndisbest]

Yes, I am sure they are overjoyed that they qualify for food stamps...

Technically I qualify for food stamps in the eyes of the state, but I don't get them.....

If you could steal knowing with 100% certainty you could get away with it, would you do it?

 

[Butter Hat]

Two weeks ago I met a lady at a yard sale and she had a lot of food for sale. See had like two dollars a box, all kinds of other stuff crackers cookies just really cheap so I asked her how she got it all. So after talking to her for about a half hour I went back to her house couple days later and she showed me her coupon trick. Now I normally don't have the patience for all this especially have so much stuff to get online. I've gone shopping with her twice and I don't understand where she gets all the coupons, but for the first time in our lives we have extra food and it's wonderful!

View attachment 1030690

And that's not even a picture of the freezer or the pantry with juice in it! Let's just say I'll be helping her around her house for this favor. It's tough to feed six people in the house!

Next week she wants me to go alone. I see an epic fail coming in my future!

That is a very cool windfall for you! The sort of stuff I buy never seems to have coupons.