Coupon craziness

I am such a dork, Kevin suggested we do price-matching to get some deals at Wal-mart, and I did it for the second time today and the price differences are really ridiculous - 88 cents for a loaf of bread instead of $1.97 or $2.24 at HEB, grapes for a full $1 less per pound, and the list goes on. We are able to use the ads for some smaller, less known grocery stores that have great advertised deals - FoodARama, FoodTown, and Fiesta. As Kevin says, woohoo for ghetto grocery stores nearby :)

I'm a dork because I decided to take it a step further and do some other comparison shopping, and even made a spreadsheet. At Sam's last weekend, I wrote down prices of some things we commonly buy and wanted to find out what is truly a better deal at Sam's and what is the same (or less) at the grocery store. I also want to find out what is cheaper at Wal-Mart and what is cheaper at HEB. So, while doing my shopping today at both I wrote down prices, and find that its a mix and some things I bought for the cheaper prices but other things I ended up paying the higher price because I had to make a decision at WM whether or not to buy it or leave it for HEB, and then we needed it so I bought it anyway even though it was a little more at HEB.

HEB is crazy with their coupons! I get coupons each week at the register, and last week I got four:one for a free case of water, and one each for $3 off $30 purchase, $4 off $40 purchase, and $5 off $50 purchase. My groceries were about $60 so I figured I could only use the $5 coupon, and would need to spend $80 to use two ($50+$30) - nope. The girl ringing me up said I could use all 3! So I saved $12 plus I got the free case of water, for a total of $16 of savings and I got another $3 coupon at the check out, and on the way out they gave me two free car wash coupons ($8 each). What must the margin be on some of this stuff to give out so many coupons and still make money? I probably don't want to know.. I make myself laugh with phrases like the Mastercard commercials: Time spent finding coupons - 5 minutes, time spent explaining them - 10 minutes, feeling of accomplishment at saving some money - priceless.

It really becomes a game and a personal challenge to try to save money and get the most for my money at the grocery store.

Pearland Town Center

How sad is it that right now, I am really excited about the new shopping center opening up near us? Its grand opening starts tomorrow, which means we won't go there until at least next week but we drove through it last weekend and there will be a lot of places to go! It reminds me of a shopping center we went to in Kansas City. It is designed so the shops all look out onto pedestrian roads, and according to the map we got in the mail today part of it is even called 'downtown'. There are supposed to be places to live there eventually, but we'll just go down there to shop and eat. We've been seeing listings for the places coming in there, including: Macy’s, Dillard’s, Borders, BJ’s Brewhouse, Mimi's Cafe (went to one in KC, yummy!), and when we drove through it we saw that there will also be a Red Lobster, and I saw online that there will be a James Avery! There are a bunch of other places too, some I'll go to (Yankee Candle, for one) and others I couldn't care less about - Jared's, Aeropostale, etc.

I know I should be more concerned with whats going on in the world, but yep...right now its mostly excited about the new stores.

http://www.pearlandtowncenter.com