I had an awesome shopping trip at Jewel yesterday. Crazy to be this excited about grocery sales, but after you read my story, you can decide for yourself if this was worth sharing.

A few months ago, I attended a free couponing class at my church. It was a video seminar by Jill Cataldo and it explained Super Couponing. The whole idea behind Super Couponing is to save the coupon inserts as whole sheets and date them. You can then go back to and find them on a website called Coupon Tom. In the Chicagoland area, there are then additional sites of coupon bloggers telling you which stores have the best deals and which coupons you should use. They also give you links to online coupons and tell you how/when to stack coupons. Stacking coupons is when you use a manufacturers coupon and a store coupon for the same product.

These coupon blogging sites have both grocery and drug store deals. Here is an example of a great Walgreens deal I found by reading these blogs: A few weeks ago, I bought 2 packs of Bic razors (7 blades in each), 4 bottles of Pert Shampoo and 4 sticks of Suave Deodorant for $7.00 and got $4.00 back in Register Rewards. These are coupons you can use at Walgreens or local grocery stores. Not a bad trip for $3.00!

So yesterday, I spent about 1 1/2 hours looking at 3 different coupon sites and reading the deals of the week. I mostly shop at Jewel for groceries and was concentrating on their sales. Last week I signed up for Your Bucks deals at Jewel. Basically, you sign up with your phone number, email address and Preferred Card number. They automatically give you cash back in the form of coupons called Your Bucks. For example, this week, Jewel Bread was on sale for 99 cents. I got $1.00 back. Eggs were on sale for $1.29. I got $1.00 back. Suave shampoo was on sale for 89 cents. I got $2.00 back. Degree deodorant was not on sale – $2.59. I had a 75 cent coupon and then got $2.00 back. These are items I will use and they are paying me to buy them! The deals last for a few weeks, so go back in and purchase them again. I haven’t seen a limit yet.

So that’s not it. I brought along $22.50 in regular coupons on my trip just by making my list and looking up coupons on Coupon Tom. Then I followed the Jewel ad. They were running two money back ads. By purchasing $20.00 of General Mills products, you get $7.00 back. This was again, products we would use. I bought $60.00 worth and got back $21.00. I also purchased 5 boxes of Betty Crocker fruit snacks (Gross, but the kids like them!) and got an additional $3.50 back. They had a sale on Kleenix – 10/$10.00. If you bought 6 boxes, you got $3.00 back.

They have an ad going on for frozen foods called Chill. If you buy 10 items, you get $10.00 back. I have a freezer in the basement, so I had plenty of room for things that will take us a few weeks to consume.

When the new sale starts this week, they will have the Chill deal, a P&G/Kraft Food deal (spend $30.00 and get back $10.00) and a Con Agra deal (spend $25.00 and get back $10.00).

All in all this week, I got back $54.50 in coupons to use at my next shopping trip. I spent 1 1/2 hours planning. Not too bad!

For more info on coupons and additional websites, check out my Ehow article How to Save Money in a Recession by Using Coupons.  Check it out for yourself!