Grocery Deal/Coupons - A Complete Change of Strategy

I was at the grocery store yesterday and I found a coupon on the front bulletin board for $10 off something I was going to buy anyways! The only reason I looked for coupons is because the double project(I have only once ever pulled a coupon off that wall). I figure it is fair game since I wouldn't normally have done that and was only doing it for the double project. That got me to thinking - I wonder what kind of other grocery deals I could find. When I got home, I pulled out our weekly fliers, which I never (and I mean NEVER) look at. I found a jar of Ragu that was on at Zellers for $0.99 and thought sounds like a good price. Ragu is something that we definitely will eat eventually so I figured that it would be fair game. The next day I went to the grocery store that I always go to and sure enough, that same jar of Ragu was $1.89. The Ragu next door at Zellers (literally next door - they share a building) was almost half price. I went next door and found the Ragu for $0.99! I bought 4 cans, which saved me $3.20 in Ragu to what I would normally pay, which I am putting towards this project.
Now in the past I have mostly shied away from the thought of coupons and fliers for the following reasons:
1) What if I end up eating MORE Ragu than I would normally have - remember, one of the major goals of the project is that it does not affect my real life finances. If I end up eating more Ragu then that could potentially affect my finances, especially if the thing I am getting a 'deal' on is on the more expensive side of things. For example - I use Breathe Right Strips and I am currently out. If I buy them at a good deal then it looks like I saved money. But what if I was so lazy that I took a month to buy breathe right strips? Since you get 30 in a pack, I would normally have paid $0 for that month for them (because I wouldn't have bought them at all), but instead would have paid the supposed 'good deal' price, thus affecting my personal finances in a negative way.
2) What if I would have got a good deal anyways. I wasn't planning on buying Ragu yesterday, so it is entirely possible that when I finally did buy it, the Ragu would have been on sale anyways. Say I would have normally bought it in 4 weeks time, but my usual grocery store has them on sale exactly then for $0.99. In that case, I would have declared a $3.20 saving to put on the double project, but ultimately I would have paid the same price so really didn't save anything. Giving my project the $3.20 would then in fact be taking it from the 'real' me. Something I DO NOT WANT TO DO. I have no idea when I would have bought Ragu and what the price will be then so how can I possibly know exactly how much I really did save.

You can see that this is already becoming complicated, which is why I have shied away from it in the past. But if you look at the big picture this has caused me to never look at the fliers and coupons and to miss out saving on a lot of money. Surely, by allowing the flier and coupon habit to develop, this would be better in the long run. Eventually my double project will be high enough that savings from the grocery store will be insignificant, but the real life me will benefit from this habit for the rest of my life. With this argument, it is worth going ahead with the grocery saving strategy despite the concerns listed above. If I really give too much to my double project by accident, but in the long run my real life finances are positively affected, then you could consider this 'extra money' just a fee for the services of providing the motivation to develop good money saving habits for my real life.

So, now that I have convinced myself that this grocery strategy is fair game, I need to establish some ground rules.

Grocery Savings Rules
1) My baseline price will be the price I would pay in my usual 2 grocery stores. That means most of my savings for the project will be when I go out of my way to a store I wouldn't normally go to in order to save the extra $$$.
2) I can only declare saved money for the double project if it was something I definitely would have bought anyways. It's no good to save money on something you wouldn't have normally bought. You're just paying more overall in that case.
3) I can only declare saved money for the double project if there is nothing cheaper in the store. For example, if a 500mL ketchup bottle is $2 and I have a flyer that says it's $1 .50 at the store down the road, then it looks like savings for the project. BUT if there's a 1L bottle of ketchup beside it that only costs $2.50 then the $1.50 bottle does not qualify because it still costs more per mL than the 1L bottle. See how complicated this is going to get?

I will do my best not to 'cheat' and in the real me is going to save a bundle in the long run. I've already saved $13.20 in just the first day! Actually, I saved $14.50 because I didn't have to pay tax on the $10 I would have (The Ragu isn't taxed though because it's food). You can see how wonderful a method this is going to be. I'm almost 75% done this level in one day! And the best part is that you aren't taxed for buying something at a cheaper price, so ANYTHING I save is mine and nothing goes to the tax man! I don't see why I need to go to garage sales at all!

Flip