Coupon refresher...

I'll post my Target shopping trip from today later, but I wanted to re-post this previous posting about buying diapers. I wrote this last May. It's been awhile since I've bought diapers at Target and remembered how excited I was when I first got a deal on diapers at Target...

Originally posted 5/5/2010

I thought it was time to take a minute and share my shopping history/ strategies with everyone. I have always used coupons... but it never really made a difference until last year when I started "couponing."

What's the difference between using coupons and what I refer to as "couponing?" Before, I'd buy a big box of diapers for $29.99 at Target and use a $1.50 off manufacturer coupon and think I got a good deal... What would I do now? I'd wait until there was a sale or promo on diapers and use the coupon with a sale to get an even better deal... like last week, jumbo packs of diapers were $8.99 and when you bought 3 you'd get a $5.00 gift card.

I never used to buy small packages of diapers because I thought it was a better deal to get a bigger box. When you do a little math, you'll see that most often you'll spend less when you buy smaller quantity because it's a higher percentage off... does that make sense? When I first started couponing, I started figuring the per item price (my cell phone has a calculator on it so it's pretty easy to do quickly in the store) and was surprised at the difference.

Here's an example:
Huggies Diapers- box of 108 size 4 diapers- $34.98 (Walmart online price) or $.32 per diaper
Huggies Diapers- jumbo pack of 27 size 4 diapers- $8.99 (regular price most places)- or $.33 per diaper

Using the $3.00 off 1 coupon scenario since this was the most recent big Huggies coupon:
Use the coupon on the box= $.30 per diaper
Use the coupon on the jumbo pack= $.22 per diaper

That's a significant difference! To make a deal like that even better (which I did last week at Target), I'd use Target store coupons with my manufacturer coupons. Last week I had 3- $3.00 off Huggies manufacturer coupons and 3- $2.00 off Huggies Target coupons that had came in some wipes packages a couple months ago. So here's what I was able to do:

3 Jumbo packs @ $8.99 each= $26.97- $9 (3- $3 off manufacturer coupons)- $6 (3- $2 off Target coupons)= $11.97 for 3 jumbo packs of diapers. Plus, last week Target was giving a $5 gift card when you bought 3 jumbo packs- so after gift card- I got 3 jumbo packs of diapers for $6.97!! That's only $.09 per diaper!! I hate to even think how much money I wasted on diapers for my now 3 year old! If only I would have learned how to do this sooner...