The life of an OCP librarian

I am not sure if it is an OCP trait or not, but I am obsessed with saving money at the grocery store. First, I clip coupons, which saves me about 20% off our normal grocery bill. Then, I always try to stock up when something non-perishable or freezable is on sale.

Last week, my brother was nice enough to bring me my parents’ old stand-alone freezer, which they’ve had in their basement for a while but haven’t been using. So, when we made a big grocery store run this weekend, we knew that we had extra space and could stock up a little if we wanted.

At the first store we visited, I used 36 coupons, and 14 of them were doubled. This saved us $34.90. We also stocked up on Healthy Choice frozen dinners, which were 50% off, as well as Healthy Choice soups, which were also 50% off, plus we got the 11th one free. (These soups are already $.50 cheaper at this store than anywhere else.) Buying things on sale saved us $51.85, for a total savings of $86.75. This was a savings of 38%.

The next day, we visited two more stores to get the items the first store was sold out of. At the first store, we picked up some normally very expensive orange roughy that was 50% off to stash in the freezer. They were also having a great sale on the organic milk our son drinks, so I bought a gallon and a half of that. We ended up saving $35, or 32%. But, as we were leaving the store, I discovered that the milk had rung up about a dollar more expensive than advertised. So, I stopped by the customer service desk, where they informed me that because they rang up wrong, they would refund the entire purchase price of both items. Since organic milk is expensive, this saved us another $9.78, bringing our total savings to 40%!

We then briefly stopped at one more store to buy more 22 cans of Healthy Choice soup because we had bought the last 10 cans at the store we had been to the previous day (and 11 cans were for my in-laws). We threw in some frozen vegetables on sale, and ended up saving $46.82, which was 53%.

This means that the few minutes I spend a week coupon clipping (maybe 10 minutes tops), plus watching for sales saved us 34% on grocery items and means I shouldn’t have to buy anything but some fruit and milk type items for at least a month now that our “new” freezer is nice and full.