Let's Talk Savings, People!

Okay, so I'm becoming a bit "into", if you will, this whole couponing thing. I'm constantly thinking about how to cut down on my food costs, etc. I like my money with me...Really the whole thought of buying food without coupons is pretty heartbreaking considering the high costs of just about everything. So far I've collected a fairly large pile of coupons from just 2 Sundays papers. I have organized them into 3 envelopes: 1) Eating out coupons 2) Food coupons 3) Item coupons (such as toilet paper, razors, etc)
But to keep them even more organized I've divided those categories into expiration dates of: October/November and December/January dates. Clearly this will change as the months progress but I don't want to lose out on something that's about to expire because I can't find it and I also like to have a general idea of what is in each envelope. I called Hyvee today and found out that this month they double their coupons on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So I will hopefully be making my way out there this week. I'm also on a mission of getting a general idea of prices from several of the stores I do my shopping at so that I'll know where to save money and where to not even waste my time. Once I'm done with that I'm hoping the rest of this whole couponing thing is a breeze. Clipping isn't too time consuming right now. I probably spent 30 minutes clipping then another 15 minutes organizing the folders.
Today I decided to make Chilli but I had nothing at home to cook with. I decided to run by Dillons on my way home and pick up the ingredients because Chilli isn't too expensive to make. I took no coupons with me or anything (even though I have some GREAT coupons specifically for Dillons), I knew that this trip wasn't going to be big. Boy. Was I. Wrong.



 This is my reciept from today. The one thing that really irks me is that the reciept only shows what I saved through my Dillons card, however I saved much more than that! As I was walking through the frozen food section a bright orange sticker caught my eye that said "Manager Special". OMG, the deals I found. I got a HUGE salmon for $2. This salmon is regularly approximately $10! I found some meat subsitutes for $2-regularly $6! Frozen wheat yeast rolls-1 dozen for $1, regularly $3.50 so I picked up two packages. Organic waffles for $.80. YES 80 cents! Regularly $4! My total came to $24.90 and I had an overall food savings of $23 and a TOTAL savings, after adding in my store card, of $23.79...without using a single coupon.  Yes folks, running into these deals was pure luck, but the point is to look and/or ask an associate if they're having any kinds of specials/sales like this.

Fellow couponers, what works best for you?