This week we met 2 Chronic Couponers, Amber and Tamilee.

Amber

Amber is a mother of four. She began couponing when her husband’s construction business failed.  She compares couponing to a video game and teaches her children to gravitate towards coupons.

She refers to her organized pantry as her mini-mart.  She has 50 bottles of laundry detergent and 60 boxes of cake mix. Her stockpile also includes boxes sleep aids, she admits she doesn’t use them, but they paid her $2 a bottle to take them out of the store.

Her Strategies

Dumpster Dive for coupons

Trade coupons with friends

Keep Coupons in an organizer

For her shopping trip her goal was to stock up for the entire summer. Hoping to buy 800 items for under $50. She pre ordered her sports drinks so they would have the right amount when she came to the store.

One of her grabs;

Juice Boxes

$2.59 Per item

$1 off coupon (which they doubled)

Payed 59 cents

After 4 hours of shopping and $800 worth of coupons (along with the computer slowing down because of the mass quantity of coupons) here’s what she did:

$1885.56 total

44.26 after coupons!

98% savings!

Tamilee

Her 1000 item stockpile trumps personal space. It includes  82 boxes of cereal and a large variety of soup as tall as her.  She keeps it all in her small 2 bedroom house.

Tamilee use coupons for everything.  She lost her management job and was forced to support her family on her husbands park-ranger budget. Her MBA is applied to couponing! She claims she has saved $10,000 couponing, resulting in 3 weeks of beach front vacations with the money saved.

Her strategies:

Excel spreadsheet to document

Coupon binder (20 pounds) very detailed

Grabs coupons from Online, social media and newspapers

Her goal for this shopping trip was to eat off their stockpile for next 2 months and spend $500 less than what it all retails for. She was aiming to grab several frozen food items. Frozen foods are a staple for couponers because it can last a year.

$640.84 before coupons

$17.71 after coupons!

97% savings!

How are YOU doing at Extreme Couponing? I have to admit, our kitchen is currently littered with coupons. I can understand why these women have binders, what a mess! I went to Walgreens last week and grabbed FREE Carefree pantiliners when I used my $1 off coupon! (They were $1).  Woohoo!

Heres a Tip:

Free Reach Toothbrushes this week at Walgreens.

Reach Total Care 2 Pack of Toothbrushes, 2/$6
Buy 2, Get $2 in Register Rewards
$2 off a Reach Twin Pack from 5/8/2011 SS (Regional Coupon)
FREE after Coupons and RR!