Friday Feb. 3rd
No spending.
Saturday Feb. 4th
So... biggest dilemma of the day was how many newspapers to buy and how to pay for them. I know. First world problems.
I'm almost out of laundry detergent. I knew that there were going to be $1 Arm and Hammer coupons in this weekend's paper and all the stores I frequent were going to have them on sale too. I needed a BUNCH of coupons. I usually buy 4 newspapers every weekend as I usually don't need more than 4 of any coupon. In the rare instance that I do want more of a certain coupon I order them from a clipping service. I use The Coupon Clippers. The Coupon Clippers briefly had the $1 Arm and Hammer coupons available on their site Friday morning but they sold out before I could order them. I knew they would put another batch up over the weekend but if I didn't order them on Friday I was afraid they wouldn't get here in time for me to do the deals I wanted so I gave up the idea of ordering them.
I checked my Meijer mPerks account on Saturday and found a $5 off $50 Meijer gift card coupon as well as a 10% off general merchandise coupon and several other good coupons that I loaded to my account. I love it when I get the $5 off $50 gift card coupon cause it's basically free money. I decided to start with 4 newspapers at Meijer and see what the print ads actually looked like as well as check the Arm & Hammer price at Meijer.
First purchase was the $50 Meijer gift card. Spent $45 out of my grocery budget on it. That means all the purchases I make with the gift card won't count against the budget.
Next, I bought 4 newspapers at $1.50 each plus a can of Bush's beans and a package of Bush's Hummus Made Easy. I got 10% off on all my newspapers. I had an mPerks coupon for a free can of Bush's beans when you buy a package of Bush's Hummus Made Easy. I had a $1 coupon for the Hummus Made Easy. Spent $6.40 off my gift card.
I went home and looked through the ads.Walgreens and CVS both had 50 oz Arm & Hammer bottles on sale for $2.99, making them $1.99 with the coupon. I had noted at Meijer that they actually had the 150 oz bottles on sale for $6.99, so $5.99 with the coupon, making it essentially the same value as the Walgreens and CVS deals but with less coupons. Meaning, with 4 coupons I could get...
At Meijer: 150 oz (4) = 600 oz for $5.99 (4) = $23.96. $23.96/600 = $0.04/oz
OR
At CVS or Walgreens: 50 oz (4) = 200 oz for $1.99 (4) = $7.96. $7.96/200 = $0.04/oz.
The obvious answer seemed to be to buy my detergent at Meijer and not bother buying more newspapers. HOWEVER, I then saw that CVS was running this deal...
*Side note on CVS deals. Anytime they advertise a deal where you have to "Buy $X, get $Y ECB", you only have to buy 98% of the X amount to get the ECB to print. So for a "Buy $30 " deal you really only have to spend $29.40. So, for the Arm & Hammer, 10 bottles would get me to $29.90 and that would be enough to trigger the $10 ECB.
**Another side note. I decided to buy at CVS this week because I already had ECBs (fake CVS money) to spend there. If you don't have any fake store money Meijer seems to have the best prices hands down. CVS is usually the most expensive place to buy stuff unless you are proficient at rolling their ECB deals. However, if you figure out how to roll your ECBs, you can almost shop there for free.
Now how to get more newspapers without spending more money? I didn't want to spend $1.50 on a newspaper to get the $1 coupon I wanted. There were a couple more coupons in this weeks inserts that I'd use but I really didn't want to spend a whole lot more money. Then I remembered! I still have mPerks shopping coupons (fake Meijer money that I'd earned) to spend! Went back to Meijer and bought 6 more papers. Too bad I didn't buy all 10 at once since the 10% off coupon was a one time use dealie. Used the $8 off your next shopping trip mPerks coupon I had saved and paid $1 off my gift card. If you figured that I'd gotten $5 free from the gift card coupon earlier plus I used $8 of free Meijer money, I ended up getting 10 newspapers for $2. I can live with that!
Meijer shopping - $7.40 total off my giftcard
Sunday Feb. 5th
Here's my CVS shopping. The deals I used were "Buy $30 of Arm & Hammer (or other stuff listed), Get a $10 ECB" and "Buy 2 Speedstick deodorant, Get $3 ECB." The Speedstick deal was limit 2 - meaning you could do the deal twice. If you did it in separate transactions you would get two $3 ECBs. If you bought 4 in one transaction you would get one $6 ECB. This weekend's paper also had Speedstick coupons that were "Buy One, Get One Free, up to $2.99 value." Speedstick was on sale 2 for $5. If you used 2 Speedstick coupons and bought 4 Speedsticks, that meant you would pay $5 and get a $6 ECB; essentially a $1 moneymaker. If the register auto-deducted the Speedstick Coupon for the full $2.99 maximum value (as it often does at my favorite CVS), you would "make" $1.98. Here's how my deals went down...
Transaction #1:
4 Arm & Hammer laundry detergents @ 2.99 each
4 Speedstick deodorants @ 2.50 each
subtotal 21.96
- 4 x ($1 Arm & Hammer coupon)
- 2 x ($2.99 Speedstick coupon - got the max value! YAY!)
-$5 ECB
-$5 ECB
1.98
+1.19 tax (on $17, probably cost of 4 detergents and 2 Speedstick?)
$3.17, plus I got a $6 ECB for the Speedstick
Transaction #2 (at the store down the street):
6 Arm & Hammer laundry detergents @ 2.99 each
subtotal 17.94
- 6 x ($1 Arm & Hammer coupons)
- $5 ECB
- $6 ECB
0.94
+1.26 tax (on $17.94)
$2.20, plus I the $10 ECB printed
Total paid out of pocket $5.37, $2.45 of which was tax.
Essentially got 500 oz of Arm & Hammer for $2.92, or $0.006/oz + 4 free Speedstick deodorants
+ $10 ECB for later
I'd call that a successful day of shopping!
All the Speedstick is getting donated.
Monday Feb. 6th
No spending.
Tuesday Feb. 7th
First thing I discovered this morning is that the Arm & Hammer coupons I wanted are now available as a printable. I printed out my max. The Meijer preview ad shows the smaller bottles going on sale on Thursday so I'll probably pick some more up.
Another word on printables. If you see a coupon you like, PRINT IT. It may not be there when you look again. The manufacturer sets a limit on the number of prints per coupon. Once it's reached the coupon will no longer be available. DiGiorno is a great example. The printable had a longer expiration date than the Sunday insert coupon (which expired 2/6). I printed them back in January knowing they'd go on sale for the Superbowl. These coupons are no longer available (NLA) to print.
Time to finish up this weeks grocery deals and do some meal planning!
First thing I had to do was organize my freezer to see how much room I had. Kroger has DiGiorno pizzas on sale for $3.99 which is a good price. I have coupons for "Buy 2, Get 1 Free DiGiorno" which makes them $2.66 each and that's a stock up price. I used to have a stand up freezer but it croaked a couple years ago and I never replaced it. Somedays I really miss it! After organizing the freezer I decided I had room for 6 pizzas.
Kroger shopping...
6 DiGiorno pizzas @ 3.99 each
4 Siggi's yogurt @ 1.00 each
64 oz Ocean Spray Ruby Red grapefruit juice 2.49
1 can Campbell's Well Yes! soup 1.99
subtotal 32.42
- 3.99 DiGiorno (printable from coupons.com)
- 3.99 DiGiorno (printable from coupons.com)
- 1.00 (off 2 Siggis'; printable from Siggi's website)
- 1.00 (off 2 Siggi's; printable from Siggi's website)
- 2.00 (Kroger ecoupon on Ocean Spray grapefruit juice)
- 1.99 (Kroger ecoupon on Well Yes! - it was the Free Friday download)
18.45
+0.17 tax (I have no idea what was taxed. Grapefruit juice?)
$18.62
Grapefruit juice is being donated. I bought it cause it was a good price.
$18.62
Now on to Meijer...
16 lb bag of cat food @ 9.99
1 gallon of milk @ 1.19
2 15.2 oz boxes Kellogg's Mini Wheats cereal @ 1.99 each
1 8 oz bag Sargento shredded cheese @ 2.00
1 loaf Nature's Harvest whole wheat bread @ 1.67
3 Roma tomatoes @ 0.73
1 pear @ 0.83
5 bananas @ 0.87
1 red onion @ 1.14
1 head of lettuce @ 0.99
1 butternut squash @ 3.18
3 lb bag Honeycrisp apples @ 4.99
4 lb bag oranges @ 2.49
1 bag Welch's frozen fruit @ 2.69
1 can Campbell's Well Yes! soup @ 1.99
1 can enchilada sauce @ 1.19
16 oz package Indiana Kitchen bacon @ 4.79
subtotal 44.71
- 3.00 (mPerks coupon earned from previous purchases)
- 1.50 (mPerks coupon off of $15 produce)
- 0.75 (Sargento cheese; received as Meijer catalina coupon)
- 1.50 (Well Yes! soup; received as Meijer catalina coupon)
- 1.50 (Welch's frozen fruit; coupons.com printable)
- 1.00 (Kellogg's cereal; redeemed Kellogg's Family Rewards points to print)
- 1.00 (Kellogg's cereal; redeemed Kellogg's Family Rewards points to print)
- 4.46 (Indiana Kitchen bacon; free product coupon I got at the State Fair last year)
30.00
+0.65 tax (probably on cat food)
$30.65, paid off the gift card I purchased on 2/4
$30.65 off my giftcard
I thought I was done shopping for the day and then I realized I still needed oatmeal and I really did not want to go back to the store tomorrow. So, ran back to Kroger this evening while G was at dance to do this deal...
It's a mix and match breakfast food deal. Buy 4 of the included items and get a $2 coupon off your next shopping trip. I only needed one container of oatmeal but I figured I'd get 4 total to get the $2 off coupon and donate the other 3.
Paid $6.46 and got a $2 grocery coupon
Three boxes are going to be donated
Hopefully that's all my shopping at least til the new grocery ad comes out!
February Grocery Spending: $75.04
February Donation Spending: $10.84
I knew $400 didn't sound right for you! Lol.
ReplyDeleteThe 98% rule never works for me. They often have $2 off $10 dog pads, which are regularly $9.99. If I get the "nice" lady, she'll enter the coupon by hand. If it's the irksome girl, it's too damned bad for me. Lol. CVS gets on my nerves.
I wish I could "see" the great deals like you do. They just don't compute in my brain. Plus, my family isn't as easy going with their branding.
Great job!!
The 98% rule only works for the ECB deals. If you're trying to use a coupon it won't work.
ReplyDelete