How I plan my shopping trips?

I would like to try to explain the way I grocery shop and how I hope to use this blog to help you snag some really good deals as well. I mainly shop at Walgreens, Winn-Dixie, and Wal-Mart. I subscribe to the largest local paper in my area (which for me is the Dothan Eagle) which gives me the Sunday paper (for the coupon inserts) and the Wednesday paper (for the sales ads). I take the Wednesday paper and collect all of the sales ads. These are on the pages of the actual paper, not separate inserts. Unless I luckily find a Winn-Dixie or Piggly Wiggly (Enterprise or Dothan) sales ad included inside. At my house, I also receive the Piggly Wiggly sales ad for the Troy and Brundidge stores on Tuesday. I also look online here at the local Winn-Dixie stores in either Enterprise or Dothan.

I then go through each ad and circle any items that I believe are a good price or even a better price if I have a coupon to match. I shop at Walgreens for the weekly deals and I shop at Winn-Dixie when I feel it is worth my time. I then take the sales papers with me to Wal-Mart and comp the prices. I usually obtain my Walgreens list from several online frugal websites or blogs. I included this week's Walgreens deals on an earlier post. I also included a post that details my most recent Walgreens shopping trip and how I purchased $136 of items for only $40.

What I hope to achieve is to provide you with weekly updates on the deals I see from each ad. Then you can shop and save for your family as well. I have so far in the month of January alone, saved my family $303 while purchasing $713 worth of groceries for only $410. Out of this savings, $136 were from coupons alone. This total does include such things as OTC allergy medicine, washing detergent, light bulbs, ink cartridges, and dog food. So it is not all food items.

I have a big red binder that I use to collect and organize my coupons but I normally do not have more than two papers on Sunday (mine and my mom's). Usually once or twice a month, I will order coupons from the coupon clippers but usually it is on something that I buy a lot on sale or a specific brand we like. It will take time to build up your coupons so do not be discouraged if you are just starting out. They are a lot of internet coupons out there now and most stores now accept those in this area at least.

I will post a picture of my coupon binder later but if you have any questions so far please leave me a comment and I will try to respond as quickly as I can.