I’ve never been one to clip coupons, which is odd because I won’t shop online without a coupon. But it always seemed to me that sorting through coupons to find brands that I like and then save a quarter was a lot of work. My family of 4 would often spend $180 or more at the grocery each week between name brand items and all of the special stuff I would buy to help stay in my Weight Watchers points. But as the economy got worse and expenses got higher, I decided that one of the places I could cut back easily was at the grocery.

Over the last year, I started shopping almost exclusively at Kroger and using my Kroger Plus card. I started paying more attention to their sales and swapping out some of my name brand items for their store brands.

I am happy to say that last week my bill was only $88!! It was a combination of the coupon that they had in the paper, the Kroger Plus deals, and swapping out brands. That would be a savings of over $5000 for my family over a year!

One of the things that is really helping is that by using my Kroger Plus card, they know what I buy and can send me targeted coupons. Today I received coupons in the mail for apple juice, pudding, cheese, Edy’s ice cream, Oscar Mayer wieners, and Oscar Mayer deli meat. Not only are these the products that I like, but the EXACT brands that I buy. $6.50 in coupons for things that I would be buying for sure in the next two weeks anyway. There’s also a notice of their 10 Item Mega Event coming up, and I always stock up on name brands when I have that.

So the moral of the story is that even us “non-coupon-clipping” girls can save a lot of money at Kroger just by being smart and making the most of our Kroger Plus cards.