I have a sickness

and it's called shopping. Before you go and sick a financial planner on me or a creditor, let me explain. I have a sickness for grocery shopping. I am like a hunter on a hunt when I go to the commissary (military supermarket basically for all civilians out there :) ). I wheel my cart through the aisles, trusty coupon holder in my front basket thumbing through my hundreds of coupons I save from week to week. I check the unit prices, I check them against my coupons. I check to see whether the item is still a steal with the coupon or if I'd be saving more with a different brand. I even shop with a calculator to help me with my unit cost and my savings planning. It's a sickness, I know.

Today, I went on a 2.5 hour long trip to the commissary for my grocery run. We've made it six full weeks without a big grocery run. We could definitely have gone at least another week, probably two with everything we still have in the pantries and freezers (yes, you're not reading that incorrectly, I have two pantries, a deep freezer and my freezer above my refridgerator's pretty full, too), but we were out of bread and cheese and those are much more expensive at the regular grocery store, so I opted to go and make a run.

Now, just so you don't think I'm that nutty (well, ok, I guess I've blown that cover already!), I really didn't spend 2.5 hours actually shopping. A half hour of it was chatting with a friend who just happened to be shopping at the same time as I was. We hadn't seen each other in months and well, you know how it goes. You start talking in the eggs section and just keep going 'til you're at the juices and the bread aisle and then realize you're still not quite done! LOL. Anyway, I know I spent a good 2 hours just price checking and thumbing through my coupons. I was a touch miffed to see they didn't have the olive oil that I had a $1 off coupon for. In fact, I had two $1 off coupons. Oh well. I did score on the Electrasol though. I had a coupon for a FREE box of some new fangled dishwasher detergent. It was for up to $4.59 or something like that. At the commissary, the detergent was selling for $4.29. Whooohooo! Score! I also had a coupon for V-05 shampoos. Buy 2, get one free. Yes! Score! Ok, so it was only $0.69 free, but still, SCORE! Oh, and another great one was for Caress Body Wash. $1.00 off of one. This was a good coupon because ususally the $1.00 off coupons are for 2 for $1, especially when it's something like body wash. I think I paid only $1.29 for my 16oz bottle! WHOOOHOOO! Oh, and I had 2 of those coupons.

See? See how ridiculously happy this coupon using makes me? It's a sickness, I tell you. I sickness. Today I spent a grand total of $292.35 on groceries that will last me at least 6 weeks and saved a grand total of $47.63 in coupons!!!! The cashier asked me in an incredilous voice when she realized I was still unloading groceries from my cart how I got all the stuff in there to begin with. She also told me my husband got very, very lucky in this department having me for a wife! You hear that, honey? You are one lucky guy! ;)