I’ve been receiving your emails for a few months and was wondering how you calculate your savings? I went to Publix today and spent $37.07. The bottom of the receipt said I had Store Coupons of $6.81, Vendor Coupons of $7.70 and Special Price Savings of $18.94 = Savings Summary of $34.45. So, did I save over 40% on my groceries or do I only count the savings from the coupons I used? Thanks! -April
Guess what, April? In my opinion, there’s no “right” or “wrong” way to calculate savings and everyone has a bit of a different method to doing so.
I find it fun to see my total percentage of savings based upon retail, pre-coupon price vs. post-coupon, sales price. Of course, most of the prices are much higher than I’d ever pay (I mean, come on, we all know better than to pay retail, right?!), so it’s not exactly an accurate representation of true savings. But, it’s still rewarding and fun to see an 85% or 99% savings shown at the bottom of the receipt! 🙂
However, how much you spend matters so much more than how much you save. So I’d encourage you to set a grocery budget and focus more on sticking with that grocery budget, rather than getting overly focused on how much you save.
In the long run, consistently sticking with a grocery budget is likely going to save you a significant more amount of money than just concentrating on having large percentages of savings on your receipts.
Just for fun: How do you calculate your savings?