WalMart Hates Me

...and so do the people in line behind me.



I confess - I'm "that lady." I price match. Come closer... and I use coupons.



I just hate paying full price for anything. Darren and I sat down at the beginning of this year and set a few family goals. One of them was to successfully live on a budget. This does not just mean track our money to know where it goes but to actually set spending limits and stick to them. So for me that means compressing that grocery/household monthly bill as much as possible. This can get annoying because saving money is actually a lot of work and it requires you to be somewhat organized. Fortunately someone else is doing a lot of the work for me. A friend in the ward sends out a weekly email that lists the best deals of the grocery store fliers for the week. I just make my grocery list from it. Then I match up as many things as possible with a coupon I've previously clipped and I'm off. Once in a while I have to go to different stores for the best deals but I actually don't enjoy shopping and so I usually head to WalMart in order to price match and get it done in one stop. Now to be fair to everyone else in the store I try to go in the morning on a week day or late late at night. It cuts down on the looks from the people behind me. I never get in the old lady checker's line. Gotta get someone young who knows how to work that machine. And I always separate out the items I am not price matching to make it go faster. While I am shopping I write down the regular price so I'll know how much I am saving.



Anyway the last shopping trip I made there were only six things on my list that were not being price matched - two of those items I had a coupon for. I ended up buying at three places to snag my deals. When I got home I added up all of my savings. This is where I ended up.



Total Charged by Stores (Regular Prices)= $218.48

Club Card Savings (Sale Price Savings or Special Deals at stores) = $40.83

Price Match At WalMart Savings = $40.53

Coupon Savings = $15.70

Total paid for two weeks of groceries, a gift, and diapers/wipes = $121.42

TOTAL SAVED = $97.06



I came home that day a little giddy. I reminded myself of the lady in the IKEA commercial running through the parking lot screaming "START THE CAR! START THE CAR!"



*A little glimpse into how cheap I can be. Walgreens had diapers on sale from $11.23 each to 2/$16 (save $3.23 each). Also if you purchased two packages of diapers you got a package of wipes for free ($3.29 value). Now enter Heidi with her coupons. I used a $1.50 off coupon for each of the diapers and then a $.75 off coupon for the free wipes! So what should have cost me $25.75 ended up costing $12.25. I walked out of Walgreens feeling like I had sucker punched them. Then I went home, grabbed more coupons and did it two more times.