My Name is Elizabeth and I'm a Coupon-Junkie

I dreamt about grocery shopping last night. In my dream I was getting everything for free, and the grocery store, instead of being chaotic and confusing, enticing me to purchase expensive items I don’t need, was perfectly clear. I knew exactly what I needed to purchase and how to get it for free. I could see the pricing traps for what they were and had no interest in them.

I’m pretty sure I dreamt I was Jennifer Clarke.

We had Jennifer over to our house last night (all the way from West Siieede!) to do a tutorial about Coupon Sense, a website I joined about a month ago to help cut down our grocery/food costs.

The Coupon Sense website is basically a database of all of the sales and coupons out there at the major grocery stores at any given time. I’ve been really impressed with the results that I’ve had with using the site just at face value, but after Jennifer came by and explained what she gets out of coupons, I was utterly inspired.

Jennifer is about my age and has four children. Her kids are younger than mine and closer together, but otherwise, I feel like her family is pretty comparable to mine. She said that she spends between $250 and $400 a month on groceries. Um, WOW. I’ve been really impressed with myself over my $175-$200 A WEEK bills lately.

I could go on and on about the interesting stuff she told us about grocery shopping, coupons, food and supermarket chains, but what it comes down to is that I was completely sold. We grilled that poor girl for about two hours and she had an answer for everything. And she drove all the way out to meet with us even though she had to be up at 4AM to film her weekly coupon segment for channel 5. Jeez Louise.

There were a bunch of people I had emailed about her tutorial who weren’t able to make it last night. She has told me she would be happy to come out to the East Valley again, maybe in October if we can get a good group together. I think this is a fabulous idea. I would like to have a few months to attempt this system in earnest and then talk to her again (about what I’m still doing wrong).