I'm at it Again

It's been about a week and a half sense Joe and I did our first big shop at the local grocery store. Even though we shopped smart and we got everything we needed we began to realize yesterday that we were running low on food. When we went shopping last we had to purchase a ton of toiletries' and didn't really focus on food as much. Personally, I can live on minimal food because I don't eat that much throughout the day but Joe is another story. I knew for this trip we really had to stock up if we didn't want to return to the store for a while so I decided to get out the ads. 

Once we got to the grocery store we spent about an hour filling (and I am filling) our cart. Joe started to doubt my shopping skills a little. He actually began to giggle at me and call me those crazy people from Extreme Couponing and I couldn't help but think the same thing as I was loading multiples of things into our cart. I was even able to get Joe some of the things he likes but I hate to spend money on. 

When we hit the check out I was the one sweating. As Joe was helping the cashier by bagging I was watching our total grow and grow. I refused to look in Joe's direction because I was sure he was as nervous as I was. Once I handed over our coupons and reward card I couldn't believe my eyes! Joe was even in shock and he told me a million times on the way home he does not understand how I do it.

Without actually clipping coupons I think I did pretty well:

The original price - $303.38 after our coupons and rewards card - $186.47 a savings of $147.21 !!!

Some of you might think this is still a little high but for the amount of food we go through (Joe needs a lot to eat when he works out) this is actually our normal budget for groceries and this will last us close to a month.