I'm one of those coupon ladies now.

I've known about the whole grocery coupon trickiness for a while but never wanted to do it up until now. I can't say why, maybe because I'm a big-time health food shopper and those things never seem to be on sale, maybe because it involves work? Who knows. But my coupon switch got flipped and I'm now officially a "clipper." Today was my very first atempt. My bill was $92.81 and I knocked $32.76 off of it for a grand total of $60.05. I admit, I could have done better but I haven't gotten my artillrey of coupons built up yet. But a whole $32.76 off isn't bad, right? I did run into a bit of trouble at the register because I loaded on-line coupons onto my Fry's shopper card and the lady looked at me like I was speaking Chinese to her. I didn't have my card, only the card number (I've had so many Fry's cards that I can't remember which phone # goes with witch card so I had to use the card number.) So, I had to put everything back into my cart, go to coustomer service, where they understood what I needed completely and it took 1.5 seconds for the manager to fix it. Then I had to go back in line, unload my cart AGAIN only to discover this lady (different from the first) also looked at me like I was speaking in tongues when I told her about my card/coupon situation. Fortunately, the manager anticipated this and followed me and in another 1.5 seconds, he had all my internet coupons that were on my card working.

Here are the lessons I learned today if you want to start doing this too:
a.) unless you want the cashier to look at you like you are crazy, don't leave your loyalty card in your husband's wallet. Saying things like "Can I just give you the card number and you can punch it in?" Or "I have internet coupons loaded on to my Fry's card so I HAVE to use THIS one." just complicates the matter.

b.) Don't use internet coupons if you have paper coupons for the same product because they don't double the internet ones. I would have done WAY better if I had an actual coupon.

Do any of you seasoned coupon clippers have any advice for me?