There were a few deals I wanted to do today. So once my son was in preschool, off my daughter and I went to the stores! In my area, there is an Albertsons, Safeway, Rite Aid, and Walgreens all within a strip mall’s distance, so it works well to go there when I wish to do trips to different stores.
Here’s what I found today:
Safeway:
(5) Betty Crocker Fruit Snacks (more on this deal HERE)
(2) Wonderful Pistachios (on buy one, get one free)
(2) Honey Nut Cheerios (not super cheap, but a decent price since we were out)
(1) Ketchup (because my daughter requires this)
Used a $1/3 and $0.50/2 coupons for the fruit snacks
Used $1 coupon for the pistachios
Used the $1/2 printable coupon for the Cheerioes
Total paid: $11.91, plus earned a $3 Catalina coupon for the fruit snacks.
Albertsons:
(1) Sue Bee Honey $4.99
(2) Nasoya Japanese Noodles $2.79 each (more on this deal HERE)
Used the $1/1 peelie on the honey
Used the $1/1 Nasoya insert coupons
Used three double coupons
Total paid: $4.57
My store was out of the cheap Electrasol, so I left with a raincheck.
Rite Aid:
(4) Air Wick i-motion compacts $9.99
Buy one, get one free sale
Used (4) $3/1 coupons from 1/2 SmartSource
(more Rite Aid deals HERE)
Total paid: NOTHING, because I used a gift card I earned, received a $3 UP Reward
Additionally earned $19.96 towards my $20 Resolution UP Reward!
(If paying cash, this would’ve worked out to $9.84, or $1.99 each + tax)
Savings Tracker
I decided to enter my receipts into my Savings Tracker, to illustrate how it could work. Of course, how you choose to use it is entirely up to you.
Albertsons and Safeway are pretty straight forward. You’ll notice that I earned a $3 Catalina at Safeway. Because it’s still in my pocket, I’m not accounting for it at all in my savings. However, I did write the note “$3 OYNO” in the far right column to remind myself. When I go to spend it, that will be added as a $3 coupon in the next transaction.
Rite Aid is a bit trickier. Last year I didn’t have the tax column, I didn’t feel it was necessary. But many of you asked for it. Guess what? I still am not convinced. I feel it throws things off and makes things unnecessarily complicated. So I just included the tax in my shelf cost and will personally be leaving my tax column blank this year. Feel free to do the same if you wish.
Some of you have noted that the tax column isn’t in the Google Docs. I will take a look at that and apologize for the oversight.
Getting back to Rite Aid, the simplest way for me to calculate the shelf cost was by taking the amount I paid with my gift card ($9.82). adding the wellness savings of $19.98 (noted on my receipt), and the total coupons I used ($12). That gave me a total of $41.80. Again, I’ve decided for my personal use I don’t care about tax. I’m just including it in my shelf total. For coupons, I added $12 for the manufacturer’s coupons, and also the $9.82 in gift card money I used. The gift card was issued to me when my UP Rewards didn’t print last week.
Bottom line: Register Rewards, Catalina coupons, gift cards, etc. I add to the “coupons” total when I redeem them. This is what makes sense to my brain.
So far this month? I have a savings rate of 80.95% and still have $283.52 left in my $300/month budget. Not bad!
Don’t forget that I’ll be doing a webcast on Monday to explain more about setting your grocery budget and how the Savings Tracker works.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi, can you explain how the circulars work? I didn’t get the SS this week and looks like it was a good one. I live in Eastern WA, sounds like you might be in Western. Shouldn’t the coupon inserts be the same for the region? Thanks for any info. you can share! I appreciate your website and look forward to using it even more this year!
I do the same with my tax so I didn’t even notice that it wasn’t in the Google Docs version.
I don’t care that much about how much specific tax I pay, just what the total is at the end of the day. Thanks so much for the savings tracker, you have saved my sanity!
Question…I see you bought fruit snacks…but doesn’t the coupon not include snacks? I sure wish it did…we it way more of those then gushers, rollups and stickers. Maybe I read the coupon wrong.
The coupon includes snacks – it says “fruit shapes” (which are the stickers and the fruit snacks. I bought fruit snacks, fruit roll-ups, gushers and the new “wild berry” made-with-fruit things too… and used my coupons. Hope that helps.
I love the tax column, I get it isn’t for everyone but it works for me. Thank you!
My husband is a superstar at spreadsheets and does them all the time at work but has never gotten around to building one for me but now he doesn’t have to, and I don’t have to figure out how to explain what I want because this is better than I could have explained! Thanks so much! I am no longer the “plummers wife that has a leaky sink”.
I appreciate the sales tax column, because I use exact sales tax paid on my taxes, rather than taking the standard deduction of $1100. It works out that we always take a larger deduction than this, so now I can quickly total those columns for tax purposes! Thanks so much for a great spreadsheet.
Part of why I appreciate the sales tax column is because I live close to the Washington/Oregon border, so sometimes I pay sales tax (in WA), and sometimes I don’t (in OR), and I want to be able to track this. I think my main reason, though, is because I want to have a written record of how much I’m paying in sales tax throughout the year the same as I want to know how much I’m paying in income taxes, etc. Since I’m already recording everything that I spend, this seems like the most natural way to keep track of it. So I, for one, appreciate this new addition. Thank you!
Thanks for explaining how you add in the catalina (which I guess would work for +UP rewards too). I was trying to add them into the “rebates” column, but it messed up my total paid column. Thanks so much for doing this!