Extreme Couponing at Walmart

Is it possible to achieve extreme coupon results at a local Walmart? I decided to go on a shopping trip to answer this question. My goal was to save at least 75 percent on my entire purchase using coupons. Although Walmart accepts manufacturers' coupons, they do not double them. I chose the Walmart closest to me. It is located in Bentonville, Arkansas.



Preparation

To prepare for my coupon shopping adventure, I accessed Coupon Mom's website. It is a free to join and use. The website sorts through coupons recently published in local newspaper inserts and matches coupons to deals in the local sales flyers.



I checked the deals for Walmart and looked through my coupons to find the ones on the list. Using savings of greater than 50 percent as a criterion, I came up with a list of 12 items. Two of the items were removed from the list because the coupons expired. That left me with 10 items to purchase. I wrote out a list that included the exact size, price, coupon savings and quantity of each item I intended to purchase.



Shopping

Here is a list of what I purchased:

Two packages of Wilkinson Sword® disposable razors, 4 count bags.

One 55 yard package of Reach® dental floss.

Four, 12 count packages of Schick Slim® disposable razors.

One 4 count package of Shout® wipes. The price for this item was 42 cents greater than the price listed on Coupon Mom's website.

One package of Cortaid®'"1 ounce size. The price for this product was 41 cents greater than the price listed on Coupon Mom.

One Scrubbing Bubbles® Fresh Brush 2 in 1 refill.

One travel size Pert Plus® 2 in 1 shampoo.

One 18 ounce bottle of KC Masterpiece® barbeque sauce

One 4 count Black Flag® fly paper.



I could not find my 10^th item, Ronzoni® Garden Pasta, in this store. A total of nine items were purchased. A coupon was used for every item on the list. I had a combination of coupons from the Sunday paper inserts and Internet printed coupons. On three items, the coupon amount exceeded the price of the item. Walmart's coupon policy states that the overage can be applied to the basket total.



Extreme couponing results

Were my results extreme? Let's do the math. The total of the items before taxes was $23.86. I used a total of $18.55 cents in coupons, leaving a balance of $5.31 before taxes. This is a savings of 78 percent. I added an additional one percent savings to the shopping by using my PayPal business debit card as my method of payment. The one percent cash back is applied to my PayPal balance.



Mission accomplished--I exceeded my goal of 75 percent savings. It is possible to achieve extreme couponing results at your local Walmart. This experiment demonstrates that you do not need to have a stash of a million coupons combined with double coupon offers to achieve big savings. On a small scale, anyone can do this.