Where We Shop ~ Then and Now

In this post I'm going to show where you said you shopped and then I am going to tell you what a typical shopping trip was like for me before coupons and after coupons.

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In the last Poll I asked:

Where do you do the majority of your grocery shopping?

Here were the results:

45% ~ Winco

20% ~ Other

15% ~ Safeway

15% ~ Walmart Supercenter

5% ~ WholeFoods

0% ~ Fred Meyer

0% ~ Albertsons

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Where we shopped before we started using coupons:

A typical shopping day would start at the Franz Bread store, then Prospector's (a liquidations store), then Grocery Outlet, then Winco, and Target for toiletries.

We shopped Fred Meyer for our organic items along with a trip to Whole Foods and Trader Joes about once a month.

It was a lot of running around, but we felt like we were saving a lot. We hardly ever stepped foot in Safeway, and Albertson's was way too expensive and out of our way.

We also did the majority of our monthly shopping in one huge trip.

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Where we shop now that we use coupons:

The first major change is that there is no longer one huge trip a month. We visit stores about twice a week but spend about 15 minutes in each store. Okay I know my husband is reading this and saying "yeah right." That's just because I like to stop and analyze everything five times over. The truth is after you have been couponing for awhile and have a little bit of a stockpile you are just running in to get three or four items. I don't mean three or four items total, I mean 10 mayo, 4 boxes of cereal and 6 bodywash. :) You will spend less time in the store because you will just be refilling your stock pile and you will have everything planned out ahead of time.

The biggest money waster is buying something at full price because you ran out of it and it's not on sale right now. Do you really want to spend $4 for a jar of jam when you could have gotten it for free? Okay I'm off subject, we'll talk more about the power of the stockpile later. AND, I'm not talking 67 mustards. Coupons run in 12 week cycles so you really only need to have 12 weeks of stock. Some of us have a year and thats fine but 67 mustards?!?! Really Lady?!?! (sorry ~ Extreme Couponing vent)

Okay back on track. I don't think I've been to Winco more than 1 time in the last 3 months.

I've been to Grocery Outlet twice and it about killed me. I used to think I was getting such a good deal and now I go in and see them charging $3 for something that is a day away from expiration that I just got for free at Safeway.

The best place in our immediate area (Cowlitz County) to grocery shop with coupons is Safeway. They run great sales. Wednesday they run double coupons up to 50¢. And, they do a fabulous job at keeping things in stock. When Walmart was out of the Gain Fabric softener that everyone was after a few months back, Safeway had tons. Same went for the Nivea body wash. Everytime Target, Walmart, Walgreens have been out of a hot item, I've been able to find it at Safeway.

Shopping at Safeway without coupons is not going to save you money. With Coupons they beat Prospector's, Grocery Outlet and Winco 90%* of the time.

*not a scientific number :)

Albertson's ~ Okay I was floored to see that no one chose Albertson's. It took me awhile before I tried Albertson's, but now I'm hooked. I know it's 30 miles away. It is so worth the drive people! Albertson's runs Twice The Value coupons from time to time. They don't come out on a regular basis but you can usually find a heads up online. They will double up to $1 on any coupon valued $1 or less. They will do three per transactions and allow up to three transactions in a row. They do this so that there is a break in the line to allow other customers to get through. The Albertson's that I have been to are so coupon friendly and have no problem with you doing three transactions and then coming back and doing three more and three more and three more. You have to have a coupon for each double. They do not come in the Daily News. They come in The Columbian and The Oregonian. I get my inserts from an insert service, but I also buy about 4 Oregonians a week for extra coupons and for the Twice the Value Coupons. They also have the ads in the stores. The last few times I have been in, I have had no problems getting enough Twice the Value Coupons while still making sure that there are plenty to go around.

I can't say enough about Albertson's! I get free stuff from there all the time.

I hit Target and Super Target once in awhile if there is a good ad match-up. Same goes for Fred Meyer. I hear that Fred Meyer's policy is changing. I'm going to post more about this as I find out for sure along with some interesting information that a cashier shared with me.

I also shop at Walgreens and RiteAid more now, but I'll save Drugstores for a separate post.

Winco isn't the most coupon friendly store. Our Winco store won't take online coupons that aren't from the Winco website. But, they do have low enough prices that you can hit a good deal with a really good coupon.

Walmart is nice because they will ad match as long as the ad states a specific price for an item. They also allow cash overages, so in some cases they will hand you cash to take items home. The big problem with Walmart, especially in our area, is that they are out of stock the same day the deal comes out and then they don't get anymore stock in. It's really frustrating.

I still shop at Prospector. Mainly because I find lots of organic items for less here.

I also still shop at the Franz bread store because we go through a lot of bread. The bread that we eat can cost $4 a loaf at a regular store and we pay between 50¢ and $1.25 at the bread store. We buy 15 loaves at a time and freeze it.

Have your shopping habits changed since you started couponing?