We hope you caught the Early Show’s series this week “Super Market Secrets”.
Monday’s guest was a Consumer Reports retail expert with the inside scoop on how grocery stores are designed to get you to spend and how to navigate AROUND that to be a “centsable” consumer. We can help you with that, too!
Tuesday’s guest: US!!! BeCentsAble’s founders, Chrissy and Kristin, took Susan Koeppen shopping to show her the power of the coupon and how to really make the most of those weekly sales!
This trip was a true testament to the BeCentsAble program and all of the tools and resources available to shoppers.
Chrissy and I met up in NYC the first week of April to tape this segment with CBS. We (as you may know) are from Kansas City and Phoenix. We had no knowledge of the area, the prices or the store sales until just a few days before the shopping trip! We also did not have access to locally available coupons.
Guess what!!? We still managed to pull off a trip that saved us 66% PLUS we had a little more than $11 in store coupons (for 2 FREE gallons of milk and $2 off a future purchase).
How?? Keep reading!
First, as soon as we were notified of the store where we’d be shopping Chrissy went to her computer to check the Grocery Gathering and look up the store’s website to see the ad online!
- The store was covered by a contributing blog on the Grocery Gathering and although it was in a different area, the sales were basically the same.
- We could not use the coupon information because we didn’t have the locally distributed coupons.
Next, we contacted the store to ask them about their coupon and sales policies.
- Did they double or triple coupons?
- If so, up to what value and is there a quantity limit?
- Did they allow shoppers to buy one of a product for half price if it’s on sale B1G1 FREE?
- Did we need a store loyalty card/shopping discount card?
Then we started making a list of things an average family might need or use in a week.
- The items we purchased represent a variety of products anyone could use from produce to toothpaste.
- We searched for coupons using coupon databases in our own stockpiles that we could use, and we found a few printable coupons that would help us out.
- We read the circular for any special deals we could take advantage of that weren’t in the Grocery Gathering post.
To make things a little easier, we went online to the store’s website and requested our loyalty card so it would be in the system when we arrived to shop. This saved at least 20 minutes since the Customer Service counter was BUSY the day we were there.
Finally, we organized everything in our Couponizer for use at the store! Click here to read a review about the Coupononizer or order your own.
It was a blast to take the crew shopping and see how much we were able to get for so little.
We are grateful for this opportunity to demonstrate the potential that lies in learning how to shop and save “centsably” and how simple it is to make it happen!
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