Small town couponing

I hear all the time that you can't get great deals in small towns and that shoppers simply don't want to drive that far to save the money. Well, as many of you know, I also live in a small town so I feel your pain....but that doesn't stop me from being a savvy shopper. The closest grocery store to me is 8 miles away and is part of the Patricia's chain. Of course they don't have the variety or volume of product that the larger chains have, and their prices tend to be a bit higher, but what they DO HAVE is price matching and double coupons (woo hoo!). In order to make sure I get the most for my money, I get the Kansas City newspaper (for both ads & coupons) and use it to my advantage. I clip my coupon inserts as well as using the printables. Then I take the ads from all of the Kansas City stores and find the best deals on any items that my local store carries. I put the item description, price and store name where the best price came from, and put it on a post-it note. I then put the post it note on my coupon for that item, moving the note to the items as I find them and put them in my cart. By pre-marking my items, it makes it sooo much easier for my cashier to check me out at the end. Of course I have the ads handy just in case they need to see it, and if I'm not being lazy I have added the ads page number to my note and circled the items to make it easier to spot. If you want to help ensure a small town store is not out of of an item on your list, your best bet is to go the day the sale starts and early in the day. As with my shopping list today, there were a few items that I didn't get because the shelf was empty (darn it). To give you an example of how you can save, here is a list from my shopping trip today. You will note that I bought "real" groceries to pack lunches and cook with, and not just a bunch of junk food or 200 bottles of mustard...and was still able to get a great deal.

• 1 Gallon of Roberts milk
• 1/2 Gallon of Silk chocolate soy milk
• 2 loaves of Sara Lee wheat bread
• 3 cans of Campbell's cream of celery soup
• 3 cans of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup
• 3.08 pounds of Red Delicious apples
• 2 packages of Oscar Meyer carving board lunch meat
• 2 cartons of Best Choice large eggs
• 1 red pepper

Total spent after price matching and double coupons $15.71. What it saved me a total of $20.58 off list prices, 30 minutes of drive time and about $4 in gas for my vehicle.