Your Husband and Shopping: So Easy a Caveman……You See Where This is Going, Right?

A guest post from my husband –

I have to admit two things: I do none of the couponing and none of the shopping in my house (I do bring the Sunday paper inside and throw the remains into the recycle bin afterwards, but I’m not sure that counts…nope, I checked and it doesn’t). Kelly is the resident expert and one of my rules is if you are married to an expert in something, don’t try to out expert the expert (or something like that).

So on Sunday, it must have come as a shock to my wife when I asked to do the shopping. I had not suffered a head injury (that I recall) or lost a bet. Simply,  I was curious and wanted to give it a go.  Because she had already made the list and matched the coupons, all I had to do was go to the store and get the stuff.

I went to buy:

• organic apples
• pie crust
• cheese
• cola
• croissants
• rice
• oil
• and a couple of other things

The grand total came to$42. After using the coupons and BOGOFs, the total was $21. That’s a savings of 50%! Upon checking the receipt, it was determined I paid too much for the apples. Some of the apples were marked as a “manager’s special” and some were not. I accidentally picked up the non manager’s special apples and paid full price. After a quick return of the wrong apples, the adjusted total came to $35 and I paid a grand total of $13. For those you keeping score at home, I saved $22 or 63%! And I’m a half wit!

So what is my point? Don’t let your husband do the shopping. Now that is some sound advice in my opinion, but the real point is that planning and couponing will save your household money. Because Kelly had an easy to follow plan in place, she was able to hand the list off to me. This freed up her time to do some other things and it gave me a taste of how this all works.