I introduced the concept of coupon stacking in a blog posting last month. I’ll admit that I’ve done my fair share of coupon stacking but not to the extent of this extreme couponer that I read about in the Kansas City Star earlier this week. This woman is so adept at using coupons that sometimes the stores end up paying her money back on her purchases.

This story inspired me so much so that when I needed to shop a few days ago for, um, certain, well, feminine products (we are a household of three females, after all), I decided to give extreme couponing a try. Here are the steps I took to save $19 on that shopping trip.

1. Stop and Shop was having a Procter and Gamble promotion, whereby if you spent $25 in P&G products, you got $5 off your shopping order. Not a future order, via a coupon that printed out at the checkout counter, but $5 off instantly.
2. Products like Always were on sale, 2 for $11. (They’re normally $7 each.) Tampax was on sale as well.
3. In addition, certain products in the Always line were being discontinued and were marked down significantly to move them off the shelves.
4. I had 6 P&G coupons that I got from the Sunday paper. (I could have also gone to this P&G coupon site online to print out coupons.) Two were buy one, get one free, two were for $2 off and two were for $1 off.
5. I selected one of the products that were 2 for $11, giving me two items in my basket.
6. I then selected the two items that qualified for the buy one, get one free. One of these was the product on clearance at $2.34; the other was $3.99.
7. I then selected the rest of the items on my list, giving me a total of eight items in my basket.
8. Of those, six would qualify for coupons: 2 @ $2 off; 2 @ $1 and 2 @ free!
9. When I got through the checkout line, my coupon savings added up to $14.
10. When I reviewed my receipt I noticed that I did not get the $5 off instantly, even though I’d spent $37.79 on P&G products.
11. The customer service desk couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong, and after 10 minutes of trying to finagle coupon codes, the clerk finally opened the register and handed me $5
12. Total cash spent: $24.79. Total savings: $19

The shopper in the Kansas City Star story said that she felt “guilty” at first about being so clever about using coupons, and I did, too–waiting for the clerk to tell me that I couldn’t use so many coupons at the same time. But she kept ringing up the coupons, and my total kept going down.

I realize that if I hadn’t purchased eight products but only the six I needed for the coupons, I would have saved just as much but spent less out of pocket–$27.79 before savings; $14.49 after savings. But, like I said, we’re a household of three females, and we needed to stock up.

What about you? Do you have extreme couponing stories to share? What’s the most you’ve ever saved at the supermarket?

P.S. Because Stop and Shop is still one of the supermarkets that rewards you for bringing your own reusable bags–$.05 per bag–I actually saved an additional $.30 in bag credits, too.