Aimee, from ExtremeCouponingMom.ca was kind enough to take me shopping on Saturday for my very first extreme couponing experience. Even more exciting is to realize it CAN be done in Canada!
Normally, a 15 mins drive, it took us more than an hour to get to WalMart because of highways being closed for construction and walkathons so we kept getting detoured. A bit frustrating, but we laughed about it knowing it just made the experience that much better! We went to a WalMart that isn’t on a bus route and, as I was walking to the store with my binder of coupons, I started getting really excited to learn from my “guru”. You can learn from Aimee too as she offers coupon seminars.
Aimee is amazing! She had looked through my coupon binder in the car ride there (which included the $47.50 worth of coupons I had received in the mail the night before! It’s the pic at the top of this blog). She was able to remember when I had coupons vs her binder that weighs more than 30lbs (!!!!). The tricks they mention on TLC’s Extreme Couponing are very true…pay attention to sizes of the products you are buying. If there’s no restriction on your coupon, then look in the areas of the store with travel sizes, or smaller sizes. If you have a coupon for a few dollars off, then you will probably get the smaller sizes for free.
The coolest part of shopping was when I loaded 30 boxes of Ziploc bags…for free!! By price matching with another store where they were on sale for $1.99, and having a coupon for $4 off when you buy 2, I was able to get 30 boxes for FREE! A few people around us were watching intently (including one mentioning that he wanted to get a box, but only if there were some left…we did leave some, no worries), so I kept reminding Aimee to hand out her business card.
Prior to this experience, I didn’t understand why there’s so much marketing around price matching. Now I get it, especially when gas prices are so high! Didn’t have to drive around everywhere. Aimee brought a spreadsheet where she listed the sale items at other stores so we were able to take advantage of those sales at WalMart because she also brought the flyers with her.
It took about an hour for both of us to check out (I told each new person who came in line behind us that we had lots of coupons and were price matching so, if they were in a hurry, they may want another line). Eventually, a older couple just joked that they weren’t in a hurry and were excited to see the process. One of the women from the neighbouring aisle even asked where we got our plastic sheets to hold our coupons because she just brought them all in her pocket. I handed Aimee’s card to each of them, and our cashier who was having fun with our coupons too.
Here are our carts before checking out:
Here’s my loot:
Which included, among other things:
- 1 box of 100 Pampers (for which I paid $14.97!)
- 2 bags of 8 rolls of paper towels
- 4 boxes of Koolaid Jammers
- 4 toothpastes
- 1 Glade roomspray with 2 refills (this is a gift…shh, don’t tell anyone!)
- 30 boxes of Ziploc Sandwich bags
So, the “numbers” from our trip:
- 2 hours in store
- 86 items bought
- coupon value used: $143.62
- spent $90.56 ($20.81 of that was tax)
- brought home $212.52 worth of products (which is based on the price-matched price, rather than the regular price of each item)
- 68% saving (excluding the taxes)
To put it all in perspective, if I had bought all the Ziploc bags at the price-matched price of $1.99 and the box of Pampers, all the other 55 products for FREE!
I’m TOTALLY hooked!!
