The Price Is Right

Lewis has found his way into Bernie’s coupon collection.

I think it was on New Year’s Eve in December of 2010 that we saw the first episode of Extreme Couponing.  We were intrigued but didn’t think saving that much money with coupons was really possible absent extenuating circumstances.  After seeing the show, we started taking coupons a little more seriously.  I admit that I had my doubts that saving $.35 on toothpaste was really going to save us a lot of money.  We had been regularly grocery shopping at Walmart since their prices seemed to be much better than our local Stop and Shop.  Grocery shopping without a clear plan led to a grocery bill that regularly exceeded $200/week.

Being in retail, Bernie already knew that things were cyclical and quickly figured out that you couldn’t just use the coupons in the Sunday paper to go grocery shopping that week.  You had to save them until the item went on sale.  Instead of buying a large tube of toothpaste, you buy the smallest one the coupon will allow when it is on sale.  In some cases the sale price will be $.88, most stores will double the $.35 coupon, and in that case you end up paying $.18 for toothpaste.

Bernie’s job puts him in various stores in a variety of locations which makes it easy to take advantage of many sales and specials.  His routine seems to have become scanning the sales circulars as they come in during the week.  On Sunday when he’s watching football he cuts the new coupons, organizes the stash and puts together the grocery list. He often places an order online at Shoprite at Home where we can either go pick up the groceries after the store collects them for you, or you can have them delivered if you know you will be home during a specified window.  This is way easier than trying to shop with little kids.

Bernie’s got this down to a science.  We may not be buying thousands of dollars of product for pennies like the people profiled on the TLC Show, but he has managed to get our grocery bill down to about $100/week and we have more food in the house than we did before.

At one point, many years ago when Blockbuster was still open, we rented “The Price Is Right” game for what was probably the Gamecube.  Bernie knew the price of everything, it was really unbelievable.  I didn’t stand a chance playing against him.  Whenever I hear the term “fiscal cliff,” I think of the game on “Price Is Right” with the man climbing up the side of the mountain.  Maybe President Obama should reach out to Bernie before we get to the peak as a country, Bernie might be able to save the yodeler and the country from an economic freefall.