Generally I love this time of year. Getting ready for the holidays, seeing family, and the deals... oh the deals! Every inbox, mailbox, and website is bombarding me with crazy deals. Plus, as I've mentioned in years past, it's my birthday month so all my mail is doubly exciting with all my birthday perks.
The month has been a whirlwind of going to work, driving my daughter to dance, and throwing a surprise 50th Wedding Anniversary party for my parents. I got done with the party last weekend and finally took a breath, then realized the month was screaming by. Gotta do my deals NOW!
Surely I'm not the only one that does this... everyone wants my Christmas wish list. So... I go about putting things on the list but, inevitably, I end up just going and buying some of those things for myself NOW cause, well, there's a crazy deal on it now, and who knows if I'll actually get the item or if it will even be around next week?
That's what happened with the tea.
Teavana White Chocolate Peppermint Tea. This is my favorite tea. It's a ridiculous indulgence though...
Seriously... $45 for 8 oz of tea.
But... it's on sale, buy one get one free (until 11/27/17) AND there's a coupon code for $10 off $40 (TEA10SHOP, expires 1/30/18), plus I get 3% back my shopping through Ebates.
So this is what I did this morning...
1. Went to Kroger and bought a $40 Starbucks gift card.
- Kroger is running 4X fuel rewards points on gift cards (til 12/13/17) so I earned 160 fuel points for the Starbucks card. (I actually bought several other gift cards too and earned 560 points total.) Might as well buy gift cards to the stores I'll be shopping at and get points for it. Each 100 fuel rewards points gets you $0.10 off a gallon of gas, up to 1000 points at a time to a maximum of 35 gallons, meaning you could potentially save $35 on gas if you play your cards right.
- Paid with my Chase Freedom Visa card and earned Ultimate Rewards points for the purchase.
2. Registered the Starbucks card to my Starbucks Rewards account.
3. Logged into Ebates (it's a shopping portal), then went to Teavana.
4. Bought two 8 oz canisters of the White Chocolate Peppermint Tea at $45 each.
- Total $90
- minus "BOGO" code, gets me down to $45
- minus "TEA10SHOP" code, gets me down to $35
- shipping is free
- $35 charged to my Starbucks card. Teavana is owned by Starbucks.
- earned 70 stars on my Starbucks rewards card for the purchase (125 stars gets you a free item at Starbucks stores)
- earned $1.05 back through Ebates
All told, it's still ridiculously expensive tea. But... Teavana is closing all it's stores and who knows if I'll be able to get this next year so I stocked up!
Other deals I'm chasing this week are mainly stocking up on baking essentials since this is the best time of year to buy them.
Butter was $1.99 a pound at Aldi this week. It will be $1.99 a pound at Kroger on Sunday 11/26/17 ONLY with a digital coupon that can be used for up to 5 packages.
5 lb bags of flour and 4 lb bags of sugar will be on sale for $0.99 at Meijer on Saturday 11/25/17 ONLY.
I stocked up on 48 oz bottles of canola oil at Kroger for $1.29.
2 lb bags of brown sugar and confectioners' sugar are $0.99 at Aldi. Meijer will have the 4 lb bags of both for $2 on Saturday 11/25/17 ONLY, so essentially the same price.
I also bought a $50 Target gift card at Kroger this morning then went to Target to do their grocery deal. They had frozen pizzas on sale, Buy One Get One Free, TODAY only. Also had a deal where you get a $10 Target gift card when you buy $50 of food or beverage.
Frozen DiGiorno pizzas are on sale this week for $5. Ended up with 6 of them for $15 (so $2.50 each!). I would have maxed it out to their limit of 10 if I had more room in my freezer. Bought other groceries though that I needed anyway and didn't have coupons for to get to exactly $50 and got my gift card. Also, since I have the ibotta app on my phone now, I've been doing those deals like crazy and earned another $5.05 at Target on stuff I bought. Not a bad deal day today. Now I've only got a couple more to chase down before I have to go to work this weekend.
What do you buy this time of year?
*UPDATE: Ebates just credited me $3.07 for my Teavana purchase. I have no idea how that math worked but I'll take it!
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