I have noticed in my blog stats that my old post "Can You Extreme Coupon in Vermont / New Hampshire / New England" gets the most hits out of any other page here. I guess people don't believe that you can do that kind of thing here in the North East US! LOL Well, I'm here again to assure you that you can. Now, that said, will you start getting groceries for your entire house for $10 tomorrow? No. Can you save hundreds if not thousands of dollars over what you are spending now? Yes.
Basically you have to retrain yourself on how you shop. You shop the deals along with your necessities, build a stockpile of things that you and/or your family uses when they are super cheap or free so you don't have to ever buy them at full price. Before you know it, you have a good stock of the necessities built up and you don't have to buy the same things week after week. For example, laundry detergent. We all need it and use it, right? So last time I found a free deal on laundry detergent, I got 20 of them. It is now over a year later and I haven't had to buy laundry detergent once, and I still have a few left so I am starting to search for another free or cheap deal to replenish my stock. Make sense?
Again, I want to stress that this is not an overnight thing, it takes time to get the hang of it and start building your stockpile. I started couponing almost 2 years ago and didn't really feel like I was really doing well until I had been doing it for about 6 or 8 months. It's also not constant, I have a good trip, then a not so good trip, it all depends on the sales that week and the coupons available at the time. Sales at the stores and coupons that are released in the Sunday paper as well as printable coupons are all cyclical, they come back around again every few months, sometimes once a year like with holiday baking items, Halloween candy, etc. So when the deal is there, grab it and make sure you get enough to carry you through until the next sale/coupon combo comes out.
My best trip to date was one of the OYNO (On Your Next Order) Catalina deals that Price Chopper had on specific products, buy so much of certain products (I think it was $25 worth) and get a $10 OYNO coupon back. This deal paired with coupons to bring my out of pocket expense down was HUGE! I got $338 worth of stuff for only $32 by using coupons and "rolling" the Catalina coupons (rolling = breaking up my transactions so I used the Catalina that I just earned to bring my out of pocket expense down on the next order, which gives me another Catalina for the next order, and so on). Now, that is not my normal weekly trip, I save an average of 50 to 85% on my grocery bill, and the drugstore and box store freebie deals are just the icing on the cake!
So definitely be reassured that Extreme Couponing CAN be done in New England. Many store policies have changed recently, and we don't have the benefit of stores that double $1 coupons anymore, but it is still more than possible to have incredible savings on your groceries and HBA items. Keep reading here, collecting your coupons and watching the coupon matchup and deal posts, you will be saving like a pro in no time! Happy Couponing! :)
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