You may wonder what the best way to is figure out deals and match-ups for your local grocer or drug store.
The truth is, deal write-ups are simple math and time consuming coupon match-ups. Because the coupon match-ups are so time consuming, bloggers have flourished. Why? Well, if you follow someone that blogs regularly they are usually familiar with what printables coupons are available and what Sunday coupons came out recently. This makes writing up deal scenarios a LOT easier.
You also need to determine whether your match-ups are by need or price.
A deal blogger (like myself) is going to match only the very best deals. Period. If it is free it gets listed, if it is 75% off, it gets listed. Paying more than 75% after coupon and still getting into a deal blogger’s match up? Well that deal blogger either has a lot of time on their hands, folks doing the match-ups for them, or the product rarely goes on sale so it is highlighted even if it is only 50% off retail after coupon and sale price. Rare sales plus rare coupons will make any list!
However, as a shopper your shopping is usually current or future need-based. Sometimes the deal write ups will not work for you since you could care less about free/cheap diapers, depends or denture adhesive.
So how can you do a deal write up scenario yourself?
It is fairly straightforward if you follow these steps:
1) Follow 10 bloggers, at least 3 of which write the sales for grocers and/or drug stores in your area. Make sure you go to the source. A blogger that does not write their own deals for the stores in your area will not be able to answer your questions concerning shopping there. I suggest at least 3 blogger writing for where you shop as that way you’ll probably get 90% of everything in the ad that is a decent sale already covered for you. That means you only have a little bit of work to do on your own.
2) Go through your local ad. Since many areas have regional ads (long ads, short ads, ads different from market to market) it is important to double check the ad in your area BEFORE you leave the house. This way you know the deals you write up and the way you would like it to go in the store (the scenerio) will actually work provided there is stock on hand.
3) Become familiar with printable coupons and Sunday inserts. The more knowledge you have, the faster and easier it will be to make up your lists.
4) Keep an accurate list of your stockpile. Personally I am horrible about doing this, but it is the best way to determine need-based items so you can stock up when a great price presents itself.
5) And finally, until you have been couponing and studying the ads for a few years, do keep a price book. It will help you in determining when the best price is available on a product, the local sale cycles, etc.
6) When you begin your list, be certain to write down the items that are free after coupon. Always get these as free is good! You can donate the items or use them yourself. No cost is a great way to try new products.
7) Now, match the rest of the ad to your list. Need laundry soap and Era is on sale for $1 and you know you have a $1 Sunday coupon? Well 99¢ is a pretty good price for laundry soap. Only you can determine if it is a stock-up price in your area, however.
Writing up a deal scenario is not hard, but it is time consuming regardless of how often you have done it. For me, Rite Aid will take 2-3 hours. That is the longest any of the eight stores I write up, and it is because you have to look at it from so many different angles. What was once a straightforward store with just coupons and SCR, now has many more components. Now Wegmans, that takes about 15 minutes and most of the time is spent paging through the ad again and again hoping to find a deal.
For a regular grocer expect the deal write up to take you at least an hour if you do it all yourself. That is why following bloggers and seeing what ideas they come up with is really the first rule of deal write ups; your deal write-up time should be cut down to about 15 minutes with their help.
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Ann, it’s official: I love you!
I’m going to forward this post to my mama, niece and daughter. You are wonderful at stating things and this is very clear and straight forward.
What I’ve tried to tell them in the past is to look at the ad, blogs, coupon match-up’s, etc. and find the items they NEED/WANT that are on sale and then add in free items or money makers to get the items they NEED/WANT for as cheap as possible. We donate any non-perishables to the church to distribute to needy families.
I then explain transaction #1 needs to be the one to get them the most +UP, ECB’s, etc. so they can use these on transaction #2 and so on….
They really freaked a while back when they got that $15 +UP Reward from Rite Aid a while back. Even I had a hard time figuring out how to spend that and keep my initial price before Q’s to $25 or close.
Hopefully this will save me gobs of time. I can’t shop as much as they want me to. Since Sunday I’ve been to Rite Aid 3 times, CVS 2 times, Ingles 2 times, Publix 1 time and Kroger 1 time. The week isn’t even over and I haven’t done my Publix trip for the week. They want me to go with them because they don’t seem to save much when I don’t go. I’m not tooting my own horn by no means. It’s just the way it happens. They work full time and one of them is also in college full time. I work full time from home and do bookkeeping at a manufacturing facility.
For instance yesterday I took my daughter to Ingles. Her total savings was $97+, she got 70 items and some of them were quite expensive like 2 big packs of ground chuck for $1.88 lb., paper towels, 2 packs of sandwich meat, a few produce items. Those 70 items ended up costing $69+ including tax. That’s under $1 per item and dang good. Ingles is having triple coupons this week. Do you guys have Ingles in your area? I typically only shop there when it’s triple Q’s or when the ground chuck is on sale. They have the best meat in town.
Sorry for the writing a book but I think you understand my situation and this post will help tremendously!!!! Maybe they won’t figure out who I am. LOL
Thank you times a million
I’ve had several neighbors ask me to teach them how to coupon shop. Then they’ll ask “Do I really need to buy a Sunday paper?”, or say “I just throw the grocery ads away. I don’t have time to look at them.” These were once at week, one stop shoppers who only wanted deals on items they used. Initially I would send emails matching up coupons with the best deals of the week. I wasn’t about to learn the weekly grocery lists of these families. Not once did I receive a reply so I stopped. Some people are in love with the IDEA of saving money but have no desire to put forth the effort or change their shopping habits. I found this very sad, especially since some really need to cut their expenses.
Exactly! I’ve heard so many people say those same things. When they say “I don’t have the time to coupon shop”, it’s usually so they can work a part time job that brings in $200 per month or so extra. I think to myself… duh, you could save that on your expenditures and make money considering the cost of babysitters these days.
Like you, I emailed my scenarios to several people for a while there but didn’t get any comments back so I stopped.
Wisk 32 ounce is on sale at Wegmans $4.99 til 10/9. Not bad if you still have the $3 coupons.. they are expiring this week I think. They also had the HE stuff.
Thanks. A lot.
I’ve found bloggers that cover the drug stores I frequent, but those covering my available grocery stores are few and far between.
Deal bloggers save me a lot of time, money and energy. I follow about 5 deal bloggers, yours being one of them.
I have read about price books before, but figured I didn’t want to deal with it because it would be too time consuming and hard to keep up with on a regular basis. Now I get it. Since you have explained it so much better within this post and the linked pricebook post, I will have to reconsider. Maybe I can use some of the many free notebooks I have to start one.
Awesome! Thank you. 2-3 hrs on Rite Aid..wow….again, thank you. I wouldn’t even go there if the deals weren’t posted.
when i’ve been couponing too much (time-wise), i tell my children that i am playing a giant game of concentration (the card-matching game)
i think my favorite point here is to check the deals against your own ad – so many times, my price has been different, or my coupon has a size restriction, and my deal (particularly at rite aid) falls apart!
What I want to know how to do is the NEXT step. Making a scenario for a few products is rather straight forward, but how to make another deal using the rewards (whatever they’re called varies by store) is where I get lost. And how to combine the various offers in multiple transactions to get the lowest OOP on each transaction is where I fall down. I really need help understanding that.
Barbara if you do Rite Aid, my weekly posts on Friday are pretty good about describing exactly that. CVS is easy too, especially since their cashiers don’t care if you do 100 orders one right after the other so you can use immediately earned ECB.
Walgreens is the tough one. It is difficult because of the basic requirement that you can’t use the same manufacturer’s product to get a new RR (not 100% accurate, but until you are a walgreens expert, close enough). Also the 1 manufacturer coupon per item ith the RR is considered a manufacturer coupon, also throws people off. Hence the need for cheap “fillers”. This Walgreens tutorial should help a lot.
One thing I suggest Barbara, is taking a paper and pen and write down the transactions would like to do before you leave for the store, and the order in which you need to do them. I have to tell you that I do this all the time. Standing in the store and fumbling is not my idea of a good time as I can get flustered. The strange thing for me is I never write out Walgreens, arguably the most difficult of the three drugstores, but I will write out Rite Aid (my favorite) and CVS (super easy).
Ann
Thanks for the replies. Yes, I do all that stuff at home, and do know the mechanics of how the RRs fit in at WAGS – where I shop the most. I know the rules, etc. But when sometimes gurus figure out their scenarios with an OOP of $1 or less, then do the next one for $1 or less, and on and on up to several transactions for $1 or less, I am in awe. I just don’t seem to have the knack for arranging my purchases to get the lowest consistent OOP. If I can do four transactions with $10 OOP or less, that’s good for me. But the next person does the four for maybe $3 total OOP. I’m always so glad when those people post them somewhere that I can find them, but just wish I knew how to do them cuz I can’t always depend on someone else. Guess I should add that I try to get as much as I can of the sale/RR stuff because it is one way I can donate to the food pantry and other organizations. So my purchases do not necessarily need to be things that I use, but things that can fit together for an OOP so I can get back max RRs to use to buy more low OOP to give away.
I begin with looking at the price before coupons, then price after, and what reward I will get. If you have those three numbers, you can look at what combos are best, especially at CVS (and probably RA, but there isn’t one in my area
). When figuring Wags, you also need to also figure out the number of items in each transaction, and see if there is any items in the ad that you want for the extra item(s) that does not have a manufacturer coupon when paying with RRs. Making sure you don’t do back-to-back transactions with the same RR items is important, so it is best to write it all out, or at least have the list of prices/manufacturers on hand. HTH!
At kingdomfirstmom.com, there is a weekly $5 Challenge (tab at top of page) that people share their scenarios for $5 or less OOP at CVS, Wags, and now Rite Aid. Alyssa has her scenarios (starting with zero rewards) and then has a linkup for others to share on all three stores.
Aaah, yes, I see it. Thank you for your help.
My only input about that – Rite Aid should be money makers 7/8 weeks, so $5 OOP is not the best idea.
Once you start, CVS should also be completely free with little to no money OOP.
Now Walgreens has a steep learning curve, so take in any and all deal ideas you can get for that one!
Ann
Plus many of the $5 scenarios have much less product.
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