Total spent for everything pictured above: $59. (And $5 of that was sales tax, people!)
How much did I save? Well, shoot…I already packed away the toys in my closet and I’m too lazy to go fish it all out again. I’m sure you understand. Suffice it to say everything was 75% (except the crayons which were a quarter each). So, that’s about $240+ worth of toys, baby!
Not bad, not bad. Would you believe I actually COMPLETED Christmas shopping for my daughter on this trip (as well as a couple neices and nephews)? It took less than an hour. And I’ll probably finish up my son’s gifts for $0.00 out of pocket thanks to the Amazon credit I’ve racked up using Swagbucks. SCORE! And SCORE!
So while others will wake at the crack of dawn the Day After Thanksgiving, I’ll be taking a Day After Thanksgiving Nap! HA! You just think of that as you line up outside your big-box retailer of choice at 3 am!
Earlier this week I reported the Kraft Catalina was working at both Fred Meyer and QFC, and that I’d opt to do it at Fred Meyer, even though I thought the QFC deal was only slightly better.
Well, I read this post over at Queen Bee Coupons and decided to head back to QFC. Good thing I did – it turned into a money-maker deal for me since my store had the $1/2 Kraft Cheese Blinkies!
Here’s how I worked this deal:
Buy 10 Kraft Shreds for $1.89 each = $18.90
Save $5 instantly (participating product) = $13.90
Use (5) $1/2 Blinkie coupons = $8.90
Receive (2) $5 off-your-next-order coupons
Bottom line: $1.10 money-maker!
What I didn’t know about this deal when I reported it previously is that not one, but TWO $5 OYNO coupons would be generated!
WARNING: Make sure you pay attention to the varieties you select! You are looking for the 8 oz. kinds that are clearly labeled with the promotional tags. I messed this up and selected a 12 oz kind my first go at this. Would you believe the 8 oz bags are $8.59! Holy cow. Fortunately, the store was able to fix it for me, but this could’ve easily been prevented if I’d paid more attention!
Even if you don’t have the blinkies, you’d end up paying $13.90, and getting $10, which would mean a bottom line of $0.39 a bag.
According to Queen Bee Coupons, the price of this cheese AND the Catalina are supposedly good through 8.20, which gives you some time.
As for me, I’m likely to use my $10 OYNO coupons on a QFC sale or loss leader to maximize my savings.
Thanks, Queen Bee Coupons and Coupon Connections NW!
Yesterday, I received the following comment in response to my June budget update:
So many other sites are all about “extreme couponing” and you seem to have a balance that fits my lifestyle.
I have actually been mulling over for some time now who I am as a couponer and what The Coupon Project is all about. If given the choice, I think you’ll find the majority of what I share falls more into the category of what I’d now like to coin “Common Sense Couponing” vs. “Extreme Couponing.” Here’s what I mean by that.
1. Not all deals are crazy, amazing, put-that-up-on-my-blog worthy. Do I know how to work a hot Albertsons promotion? Sure. Have I ever turned a profit buying stuff at Rite Aid? You bet. Are the majority of my trips like this? No. Do I care? No. Can I be done with the questions already? OK.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: there are two kinds of shopping trips. The first are my stockpiling trips. These are the ones where I try to hone in on those freebies and cheapies. And incidentally, these are the ones I often feature on my site for inspiration. But guess what – I also have trips (such as one I had yesterday) where I used no coupons and just do my best finding deals (which I did!). These are called need-based trips. And sometimes, you can have stockpile items mixed in with stuff you need – see my picture above from a recent June trip.
2. Don’t be surprised if other bloggers are like me, too (even in secret). Sometimes readers mention that these other amazing bloggers only post amazing deals on their site. Guess what? I bet if you asked a majority of them would admit to the occasional splurge grocery trip or trip where their savings rate was only a meager 25% or less. Or maybe they coupon so they can enjoy eating out once a week or some other nicety. I just don’t want you thinking that there are people out there that get this 100% perfect all the time. We’re human.
3. It’s all about the budget. Did you know it’s entirely possible to save an average of 80% on your groceries yet STILL be over budget? If you do all the deals you can find, you can actually start spending more than you want. If given the choice, I’m going to focus on living within my budget vs. getting lots of great deals just because they’re there.
4. Getting items you want. Sure there have been hot deals on Hamburger Helper in recent months, but what if my family doesn’t eat Hamburger Helper? A lot of folks will say “donate it!” OK, I can do that. But what if I wasn’t planning on going to the store? This might come off as selfish or mean, but I think the purpose of couponing should be first and foremost to save YOUR family money on YOUR groceries. I have a limited amount of time to shop and coupon each week, so it’s important to me that those efforts are working first to help my family. Now I do go through my pantry regularly and donate items to our church. And pretty soon, I’ll be talking about working with local food banks. But what I don’t get is this obsession about getting every darn deal out there whether or not it serves any purpose in your family’s pantry. That, my friend, is the antithesis of frugality.
5. Understanding the importance of your time. This ties in with #4, and it’s something that’s become increasingly important to me. There are times, more frequently than not, where I have to stop and ask myself, “is this deal worth my time? My effort? My gas?” Recently there was a pretty hot deal on yogurt and fruit snacks at Albertsons. I let it ride after contemplation. I knew the fruit snacks would turn into binge items in my house and I’m pretty much the only one around here that actually starts and finishes an entire container of yogurt. So…not worth my time. Don’t be afraid to sit out a deal. Don’t be afraid to let a coupon – even a high value one – expire. YOU, my friend, are worth more than the deals you get.
I want to conclude with a confession. There are bloggers out there, and even readers out there, that can do this couponing a whole lot better than me. And I’m completely unafraid to admit this! What I will say is that having couponed for less than 2 years, we’ve effectively slashed our grocery budget in half and our pantry is stocked. I’ve slowly shifted my deal-getting tactics to a more manageable, common sense approach.
If you’ve been beating yourself up about getting every last deal or thinking you could never compete with the extreme couponers out there, stop. Remember that everyone’s cart and everyone’s approach will be different. I give you permission to coupon this way, and you should too.
I did a good job this month of making sure to add my receipts to my Savings Tracker. I just entered the last of them in and here’s how the month turned out:
Basically, I’m $23 under budget! Now that does account for about $20 of rebates I’m owed, but even if you look at my out of pocket, I’m under budget for the month. What a great feeling.
If my overall savings rate looks low to you (45%), there is a rather simple explanation for that. I didn’t do much stockpiling this month. I have a VERY full pantry at the moment (in fact, I need to clean it!), so I only cherry picked a few deals here and there and pretty much bought what we needed for the week. The $58 Winco trip last week was to buy a bunch of items for my mom’s birthday BBQ bash. (And yes, I’m STILL under budget!!) If I wouldn’t have had to make that trip, I’d be under budget even more.
I also want to point out something I’ve said before: shopping sales makes the biggest dent in my budget. Check it out: coupons saved me $98, but store sales and promotions saved me $128.53. This is why I always state you should try to use your coupons on store sales. They combine to give you real money-saving power! All told, I saved $226 this month, which works out to saving about $56 per week.
Tracking my savings in this manner helps me see EXACTLY how much my couponing is saving me. It also gives me a good snapshot of my shopping in general. For instance, I see I had quite a few shopping trips this month. Maybe next month I could try to work on reducing that. Or work on lowering my budget since I did so well this month, etc.
Was this exercise helpful? I hope so. Would you like me to continue sharing what and how I’m saving and spending? I would love to know if this has been of value to you.
Don’t forget; you can download your own Savings Tracker (for Excel) to follow along. It’s free. A quick update on Google Docs: it appears many of my crazy formulas are not compatible for Google Docs and would need to be rewritten. I do plan on creating a Google Docs version at some point in the near future, but unfortunately, it’s not as simple as doing a “Save As” as I’d hoped and I imagine it will take some serious work to get up and running. Stay tuned!
My pantry is pretty well stocked at the moment, and I realized I had quite a few freezer meals hanging out, so all I needed to do today was a quick trip to Fred Meyer for a few grocery basics.
Here’s what I got for $37 total today:
You might have noticed I buy a lot of cereal. True. I do. We often eat it as a snack or even dessert around here! The grapes were a splurge – about $6 total. I was also excited about the tomato soup at $0.33 a can. This is a stock-up price in my book and seeing how we just finished the last can, the sale came well timed!
We’re also enjoying fresh, home-grown greens from the garden, so I’m going to start to realize an additional savings in our grocery budget!
Otherwise, this was a pretty straight-forward, quick shop. This is one benefit of couponing: after awhile, you’ll be so stocked that going out for the weekly groceries will become pretty painless.
I’m working hard to keep my Savings Tracker updated this month to illustrate what my personal spending and savings looks like. I hope this has been as helpful exercise for you as it has been for me.
As you can tell, my savings rate is hovering just under 50%. I’ve not done a ton of stockpiling this month (really not much of a need), but if I had, I would expect this savings rate to be much higher than it is. (Please tune in LIVE later tonight when I’ll be sharing more about stockpiling.)
Because my pantry is pretty well stocked, this month I’m more concerned about coming in under my monthly grocery budget of $300. With about a week to go and $90 left, I’d say I’m on track. I will be preparing some dishes for a birthday party later this week, so I’ll have to be creative to make sure I don’t go over.
Want to follow along? You can download a FREE version of my Savings Tracker (for Excel).
PHEW. I can’t believe I just hit up Albertsons, Winco, Walgreens, and Rite Aid all in the same shopping trip. And with both of my kids in tow. Someone, give me a pat on the back!
Here’s what I ended up with (click the picture for a bigger image):
After coupons and sales, and after you factor in the Register Rewards and rebates I’ve earned, I essentially got everything pictured above for $53.48 $45.49!! Not too shabby considering today’s haul included diapers, 3 razors, shampoo & conditioner, Greek yogurt, produce, 7 boxes of cereal and more. Retail value of all this was $166.19 a savings of 68% 72%.
EDITED: OOPS! I forgot about the Schick rebate I posted early! Looks like my savings is even better than I thought!
See the 40 oz Heinz ketchup? Found those at Winco today for $0.98 each (limit 2). I also did the cheese rebate deal I posted awhile ago.
So here’s how my month is shaping up, budget wise:
As you can see, I’m right on track here…about half spent halfway through the month. I’ve also saved 54% total.
You can download your own free Excel Savings Tracker and follow along with me if you like!
Don’t forget to send me pics of your awesome finds this week! Email them to thecouponproject at hotmail dot com for consideration.
It has been a good 2-3 weeks since I’d done a decent-sized grocery shop, so I decided to head to Fred Meyer last night while the kiddos slept.
When I headed to checkout, I realized that this might have been one of the most “diverse coupon” trips I’d done in awhile. I used store coupons from the weekly ad, store coupons from the Extra Savings booklet, insert coupons, tearpad coupons, printable coupons, a Catalina coupon, a free coupon from Kraft First Taste, a free coupon from Facebook, and even an ecoupon I’d loaded to my Fred Meyer Rewards card! Thanks to the very nice cashier who rang me up. He looked like he was headed off shift, but he was so polite! THANK YOU!
Here are my finds (you might want to click the image so you can even decipher what I bought):
All told I spent $62 out of pocket, and then I earned a $3 Catalina coupon for the Sure Jell. (By the way, I DID find tearpad coupons for this item at Fred Meyer. At my store they were on the end of the paper goods aisle near dairy…so do look around a bit. $5 is NOT BAD for 4 boxes of Sure Jell and 15 pounds of sugar!!) While my overall savings rate was on the low side (31%), it was nice to restock my fridge with cheese, milk, and bread. I truly don’t mind having a $70 or even $80 shopping trip once or twice a month for need based items.
See my Fred Meyer deals post for more ideas.
The important part is sticking to your budget. I promised I’d do a better job of illustrating this with my tracker. So here’s how June is shaping up so far:
After rebates, I’ve spent $84 for the first week of June. In order to meet my budget of $300, this means I should target to spend no more than $71 for each of the three remaining weeks. You’ll notice I spent about $20 at Fred Meyer (on 6/2 and 6/4). These were random splurge purchases and not such a hot way to kick off the month. They definitely impacted my overall savings rate. I’m hoping the trip I did last night will keep us stocked well throughout the week so no further trips will be necessary. (However, I might just have to do a Walgreens run this week.)
I’ll report back next week and share how I’m doing.
Want to track your budget with me this month? Get your own Savings Tracker for Excel (Google Docs is still in the works).
I did a quick shop today to pick up some the cheap and free items.
Here’s Walgreens:
The Gillette and Old Spice men’s body wash are on sale this week for $4.49, plus get a $4.50 Register Reward at checkout – essentially making it free. I had “buy one, get one free” coupons from the 5/2 P&G. I asked my cashier if she’d do two transactions for me so I’d get both Register Rewards. She was happy to do so! She then proceeded to ask where I got my coupons. I love when that happens! If you have more than one Walgreens in your general vicinity, I highly recommend you try them all out. In my area, a couple stores are more coupon friendly than others.
Bottom line: all were free after coupons and Register Rewards! That’s a $17.96 value, but seriously, if you use coupons, that’d be a crazy amount to spend on body wash, wouldn’t it? Inconceivable!
Albertsons:
I did two transactions. I did ask my cashier first on their interpretation of the “3 doubler per shopping trip.” She told me the store treated that as “3 per transaction.” Good news for me since my nearest Albertsons is a good 15 minutes away!
First transaction – the cereal, and one of the Lysol cleaners. I paid $3.83 out of pocket, and saved $18.61.
Second transaction – the yogurt, and the second Lysol cleaners. I paid $0.87 out of pocket, and saved $9.43.
Total Albertsons haul – $4.70 spent, $28.04 saved (83% saved!).
Tomorrow is the last day to take advantage of the doublers at Albertsons. The body wash deal runs through Saturday at Walgreens.
Ever have those couponing shopping trips that are just fun? You know, when you get the items you most want and your bill is still ridiculously low?
So I had my Fred Meyer Rewards rebates. What I love about this time is that my rebate was on ONE coupon as opposed to several smaller ones. It inspired me to do a couple transactions.
Transaction one: 4 Kelloggs cereals – used (2) $1/2 printable coupons and some of my Rewards rebates. Paid nothing out of pocket AND I got a $3 Catalina! So yes, it is in fact working at Fred Meyer (although I might just be the slow one of the bunch to catch onto this deal!). You can read about how to do this deal over HERE.
Transaction two: Seventh Generation items 50% off + printable coupons, leanest ground beef + $2 Rewards coupon, all the hot produce deals + $2 Rewards coupon (organic berries, pineapple, mangos, and avocados), more cereal (with more coupons, of course), Hunt’s pasta sauce, Breyer’s ice cream, Treetop Trim (just $0.50 after coupons!)….oh, and one Hot Wheels car for my best shopper helper!
Bottom line? $24.39 for everything AND I got another $3 Catalina coupon in my second transaction for the cereal! Score! Check it out – green cleaning products, produce, lean meat, and diapers!
Granted, I did start with some Rewards coupons, but I still feel like I did a pretty terrific job! I love using those on top of sale items to stretch them further.
Want to get in on some of these deals yourself? See my Fred Meyer deals post, and then my post earlier today on the Kelloggs Catalina.
Happy Shopping!
One of the ways I’m learning to save both money and time is by limiting myself to one grocery/drugstore trip per week. This forces me to make sure I’m organized enough to do ALL my deals on one outing. (I am not 100% perfect at this, but I have DEFINITELY improved since I started couponing!)
I thought I’d share my trips with you today. First Walgreens:
The Bic Razors were $3.99 and I used (2) $3/1 off coupons, making them $0.99 a pack. I needed a thank-you card, and easily found one for $0.99. I had a $3 Register Reward from last week that I wanted to use. Since my order at this point was only $2.97, I bought one pudding for $0.25 to balance out the transaction. I paid $1.07 for everything pictured (eek, sales tax!). Go HERE to get in on these deals, too!
Next, we hit up Albertsons. There were still plenty of tortillas, and I had (3) $1.50/2 tearpad coupons I’d found at a store a few days earlier. So all 6 tortillas were only $0.24 out of pocket TOTAL. I used my $1/1 Trop50 coupons and the doubler coupons and got those for only $0.50 apiece! Finally, I’ve decided to turn some of my tortillas into breakfast burritos (more on that in an upcoming post), so I decided to look for some meat to add. I found a package of turkey sausage priced at $4.39, but with a $2/1 Manager’s Special on it. All this food? $4.13, baby! Go HERE for Albertsons deals.
With some stockpile deals out of the way, it was time to tackle my grocery needs for the week. Since I had a freezer meal swap last week, most of my meals are prepped. I needed some produce and other basics to top of my week. I also needed eggs and potatoes to finish off the 20 breakfast burritos I’ll be making. I decided to hit up Fred Meyer since they had a couple deals I wanted to take advantage of. Here is my final haul:
I know this is a rather small picture, but you should see how much produce and healthy stuff I got! I stocked up on more organic soup (this time, there was an entire ENDCAP full of it!), the B1G1 Amy’s Burritos, Horizon Organic Milk ($2.44 after blinkie coupon), tomato soup, and a big thing o’ strawberries. I spent $37.66 at Fred Meyer today. See Fred Meyer deals HERE.
Finally tally: I paid $42.86 for everything pictured, and saved $54.41 – that’s roughly 56% saved. AND that includes some splurges, such as a 3 lb bag of organic red potatoes for $3.46! I also imagine I saved money just by shopping at Fred Meyer. I’m very happy with my trips today!
Incidentally, you might have also noticed I bought a couple papers. One is a Seattle, the other is a Tacoma. I understand many of you were frustrated last week that some coupons were only in certain papers. I am hoping to try to decide which paper had which coupons last week. I’d also suggest to buy BOTH papers if you can to ensure you got everything.
I also picked up the Fred Meyer Extra Savings booklet. I’ll make sure to do those matchups in the next day or so.
Did anyone else get out to do any shopping today?
