Couponing tip: How I prepare for a Tops shopping trip

I've been getting a lot of requests lately regarding tips for shopping at Tops and how I go about preparing for a shopping trip.   This post will hopefully help you understand the process I go through to try to be most successful at the store.

Keep in mind, in order to get the best deals you should use your coupons in conjunction with a sale. My weekly shopping list almost always consists of sale items matched with coupons. I'm able to create meals for my family by stockpiling during sales and pulling from my stockpile when it's mealtime, not necessarily using only the items I bought during the current week.

My local Tops ad comes in the mail usually on Thursday or Friday before the sale starts, so it gives me a bit of a head start in getting ready for my upcoming shopping trip(s).  The first thing I do is sit down with a pen and circle all the things in the ad that pique my interest on a first glance through the ad.  They might be things I know I have a coupon for, things I think I might be able to find a coupon for, or items that seem to be a good price as is without a coupon (usually things like produce or meat that I most likely won't have coupons for).  Rarely do I buy all the things I circle in the ad and often I will end up buying items I didn't notice on my first inspection. Some shoppers keep a price book or spreadsheet to track the ultimate rock bottom price that an item ever sells for and then buy it only at that price.  I'm not that hard core.  I decide on a case by case basis if a sale with coupon price is low enough for my liking.  Sometimes I'll opt not to buy something even if it's on sale and I have a coupon because it just doesn't feel like a good enough deal for me.

Once I have identified the items I'm interested in buying, I start pulling my coupons out of my binder.  There are a lot of ways to organize your coupons (I'll blog more about this topic soon), and I use kind of a combination of ways which just seems to work well for me.  I use a binder to hold the coupons I know I'll use, the coupons I think I'll use if the price is right, and coupons that don't come in coupon inserts (from mailers, printed from the Internet, tearpad coupons, etc.).  Coupons from the Sunday coupon inserts that I don't cut out right away are kept in their insert and I file the inserts in an accordion file.  If I find I need some of those coupons in the future, I still have access to them.

If I don't have a coupon in my binder or in the filed inserts for a product I'd like to buy, I start scouring the Internet for printable coupons.  I check places like the product's website or Facebook page as well as online coupon websites such as coupons.com, smartsource.com, redplum.com, and couponnetwork.com. 

I'll go through the ad again, a little more thoroughly the second time around, to see if there are any other deals that interest me that I previously missed.  If there are, I check for coupons again.  If not, I move on. 

Once I have all my coupons together, I'm ready to put my list together.  It's very important to know the store's coupon policy!  Most stores have their policy posted online (for example, Tops' policy can be found here).

Tops is a little different than other stores, because of their gas points program.  Per their policy, you can earn 10 gas points per manufacturer coupon you redeem during a gas points earning period.  However, you are limited to earning 100 gas points from your coupons per day per household (this does not include gas points deals in the ad, such as 'earn an extra 200 gas points when you buy 8 select items' types of deals).  Basically, you can use as many manufacturer coupons as you want in a transaction but you'll only earn points on the first 10.  I very often have more than 10 coupons I'd like to use, so in order to maximize my gas points earnings, I'll go to the store multiple days during the week, using up to 10 coupons each time.  Now, if you live far from the store or are extremely busy this might be a total waste of gas and time, so you might take the hit and just use all of your coupons at one trip.  Luckily, I live quite near a store so it's more than worth it for me.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Tops doubles coupons with a face value of up to $0.99.  However, their policy states that they can limit you to 4 like coupons being doubled per day per household.  So if I have, for example, 6 $0.75 coupons for the cereal I'm going to buy I will make sure to only use 4 on one day and save the other 2 for later in the week.

Here's an example of how my shopping list might look:

On the above list (I'm not sure how easy it is to read), I'm planning 3 trips because I have well over 10 coupons to use and we are in a gas points earning period, plus I make sure I use no more than 4 like doubling coupons in a trip.  Under each trip I list the item I'm buying (including the quantity), the sale price, the coupon denomination (and quantity), as well as any other important reminders (like 'get a $3 Catalina when you buy these 5 items' or 'don't forget the bottle returns!') for that transaction.  I put my list and coupons in an envelope and head to the store.  I make sure I bring along the entire list and coupons I'm going to use on any future orders because sometimes I have to make adjustments on the fly.  For example, if I'm planning on using 10 coupons on trip 1 but 3 of those coupons are for cereal that is sold out, I'm only now going to have 7 coupons to redeem at the register.  Since I can get credit for 10 coupons, I'll try to find in-stock items from the 2nd or 3rd planned trip in order to use 3 more of my coupons.  Of course, make sure to stop by customer service and ask for a rain check for any sold-out items! 

Now, if we are not in a gas points earning period I will only do multiple trips if I have more than 4 like coupons to be doubled, if I have coupons that have lower limits on them (such as a Suave body wash coupon that states only 2 coupons per trip), or I realize I've missed a worthwhile deal earlier in the week.

My list isn't always hard and fast as I've written it, too. I may have second thoughts about some items I didn't originally consider buying, or I may decide I really don't need something on my list after all. Don't feel like you need to lock in everything on your list from the get go.

I hope my thought process (as muddled as it may come across while you're reading it!) will help you to better prepare for your shopping trip.  Although I focused on a Tops shopping trip, you can use the same process for other stores just taking into consideration your store's coupon policy (for example, Wegmans has the same policy to double coupons up to a $0.99 face value and limits doubling to 4 like coupons).

As always, I welcome questions and would love to know if you've found these tips helpful. :-)