Comparison of Grocery Shopping with and without Coupons/Price-Matching

I’ve heard from a lot of people that it’s hard for them to understand how couponing and price matching will save them money.  I thought today I would try to help people that haven’t used KC Savvy Shopper visualize how coupons and price matching can save everyday families a LOT of money.

So, even though I resemble Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, thanks to a nasty case of allergies, I pushed myself out of the house after sifting through my sales ads and coupons (since today is the last day of the month meaning a lot of great coupons will expire today) to find some incredible deals.  I decided to price match at Walmart, mainly because I wasn’t up to driving all over KC. 

With a very full cart and over 30 minutes to check out (Benadryl makes me groggy), I finally paid my $125.23 bill, made it home and started to unload the car.  That’s when the thought came to me that a visual representation may help some people.  I decided to compare, by using two different photos, what $125 would have bought if I just walked into a store with my shopping list but with NO coupons or price matches verses walking into Walmart with the same list USING coupons and price matching.

So, the picture below shows $125 worth of food at regular grocery store prices.  No coupons  and no price matching.  To make it easier for everyone to visualize, I simply pulled $125 worth of food out of my pile of groceries and photographed it. 

Here’s the amazing part --- and the part that I hope will help new KC Savvy Shoppers see the big picture.  The photo below shows the rest of the items that I picked up on this same shopping trip.  Meaning, EVERYTHING right of the Diet Coke cases – I got for FREE!!  That’s the type of difference you can expect from price matching and couponing! 

On today’s trip, I used $35.50 worth of coupons and my total bill (if I didn’t price match and coupon) would have been $339.03 saving my family $213.80!