Ruth DeGroff WI
My Shopping has Changed – Boo-Hoo! Oh how my shopping has changed just in the last year. I lived in Indiana close to stores that doubled and tripled coupons regularly. One store only allowed you to double one of each item but I lived only a mile or so away so could go in often. The clerks knew me and enjoyed seeing the deals I could get. One stockboy told me that I kept their shelves cleaned for them. He and another clerk join me in this picture showing my coupon box and a couple bags of groceries. But then I retired from teaching last May and my family moved from Indiana to Wisconsin so we’d be near our son’s family. I knew from experiences during visits to them that I’d not be able to double or triple coupons so my stockpile moved with us. An unfinished basement gave us lots of room to store the goods. But shopping was still a shock. The prices were high and no doubling or tripling. For a few months I found one store (a hundred miles away) that doubled the coupons on Saturday so my daughter-in-law, granddaughter, and I traveled there once a month to shop. But then that store closed. Now the nearest doubling store is south of the Wisconsin line in Illinois and it takes a lot of coupons to make that trip worthwhile. So what have I done to compensate? Well, like the rest of you, I read the daily tips on CENTsible Chat. Many times I’m able to do the good deals at Target, Walmart, and Walgreens. I watch the ads from the two nearby grocery stores and use coupons on their sale items. Recently my granddaughter and I found 2 cartloads of candy that has been discontinued. Joy! With coupons we stocked up for very little money. This week Oscar Mayer bologna was 99 cents. 30 cent coupons made it 69 cents a pound. Since I still buy several papers, I was able to get 8 of these. Our little local grocery store has very good meat with some weekly specials. Ribs were 88 cents a pound this week. I bought enough to feed a visiting musical team of 5 hungry college boys and to have a birthday dinner for our granddaughter. Recently we had to make a trip back to Indiana for a funeral so I shopped while we were there. I managed to buy over $400 worth of groceries for about $100 so that helped to build up my stock.pile again. Probably the thing that has chanced most about my shopping is that I miss the friends that I had at each of the grocery stores. The clerk knew me and knew that I used the coupons correctly. The stores here are big and have many different clerks so I seldom get the same clerk two times in a row. I haven’t met the coupon police yet but did have a security person follow me around Target the last time I was there. I think he was checking because I had my coupon box. I asked him about the dog food price because the 8 pound bags were $3.09 and that seemed pretty unreal. (I had 4 of the free coupons that took a $1 off and that made them $2.09 for the eight pounds. Good deal!) He followed me to the checkout counter and helped the new clerk with the coupons. He knew how to do them right too. I don’t mind him following me as I know I’m not doing anything wrong and so he’ll learn that. Maybe I’ll even make a friend of him. (My son teases me because once in a gas station in Marion a man tried to "pick me up." Now he says maybe the security man will do that. Since I’m 66, that’s highly unlikely.) But, hopefully, I will get to know the sales people. Ruth DeGroff