We arrived at the beach on Saturday and I’ve spent the last few days doing anything other than making a trip to the grocery store. It always takes a few days to clean the house after the rental season is over. After washing, drying, ironing and reorganizing every mattress pad, blanket, comforter and slip cover in the house I decided it was time to take stock of our food supply.
It’s a good thing I finally finished cleaning the house, because the shelves were almost empty. Honestly we’ve been living off the small stash of food we transported to North Carolina, along with a few meals my mother-in-law prepared for us over these last few days.
With most of the house in order I ventured out to the grocery store this morning. Lucky for me Harris Teeter is currently running a super-coupon promotion. This week the store is doubling coupons up to $1.98.
I walked in with a huge wad of coupons only to find out that the store will only double twenty coupons per customer per day. I sorted through the stack in hand and picked out coupons for items I needed the most.
The coupons totaled $21.75 in savings. After doubling I saved $43.50 in coupons alone. Plus I saved an additional $6.35 on sale items. It would have been great if the coupons would have matched the sale items for even greater savings, but unfortunately most of the things in our weekly menu were not on sale.
Where I succeeded and where I failed… In the quest to save money things will not always be perfect. While I saved a wad of cash using coupons, I purchased two items at prices far higher than I typically pay. I paid full price for toilet paper, which I never do, because I almost always stock up while it’s on sale. I also paid close to full price for Diet Coke, which my husband specifically requested.
It’s tough to shop for groceries while on vacation. While we typically transport food between our two houses, we simply didn’t have room in the jeep to do so this trip. Although I paid full price for quite a few of the items, the double coupons, (some as high as $1.50), certainly helped offset this week’s grocery costs. I often consider myself lucky with money and I was certainly lucky to find out about the Harris Teeter promotion this week.