Saturday, June 30, 2012

Shopping the sales

So I'm not allowed to extreme coupon because extreme couponing is a gateway drug to hoarding and I definitely don't want to end up on an episode of that show. I'd hate for someone to come clean my house and find a dead cat decomposing under my couch.... I'm sure my 3 cats appreciate that statement!
I managed to do quite well. I spent just about an hour looking at sales flyers for the three major chains in the area (shoprite, hannaford, and price chopper) then I always make a stop at the bakery outlet store. Then I go online and check for coupons for the products I'm purchasing on sale. That way I'm not buying things only because I have a coupon. Where the ladies on the show may save $600 or more they buy mostly junk food and spend upwards of 60 hours a week couponing. I only spend about 4 hours every two weeks and that includes the time spent at the store.
One of the things I see frequently on the extreme coupon show is that they buy so much unhealthy stuff, plus a lot of stuff I'm not sure they really need or would buy if they didn't have a coupon. Who really needs 100 tubes of mentor candy? Even if they're only 25 cents each....not even me and I love bargains!
So here's a little rundown of what I purchased complete with a photo of my receipts and some of the stuff I got.
At the bakery outlet I spent 7.07. I got 3 packs of thomas's bagels, a pack of hamburger buns, a pack of hotdog buns, a pack of English muffins. That's a huge savings since the bagels alone are normally 2.50 each when you can find them on sale and I got them for $1 each!!! Based on the prices at the grocery store I would have paid $13.98 had I bought all that at full price. I only spent 10 minutes in the store and i drive by on my way home everyday so I don't even have to go out of the way to pay 1/2 price.
I won't bore you with the whole list of things I got but needless to say I got a ton of stuff, some of the highlights were powerades for 66 cents each, normally a buck a piece. 2 giant 6 packs of sparkle paper towels $4 each. You would not believe how fast my mom goes through paper towels... I also got Santa Cruz organic lemonade (one of my favorite things and healthy too) for 99cents each, normally 2.39 each here. I also got 2 huge seedless watermelons on sale for 2.88 each, dad said he saw them at another store for 6.99 each for the same size. I also bought 4 huge London broil steaks for 1.87 a pound. Also got a bunch of frozen veggies and other healthy items too. I left the stores without buying any chips or soda. The cat litter was also a spectacular deal, I bought 4 bags of worlds best all natural corn cat litter that is $8 a bag, I had mail in rebates for 2 free bags and 2 $5 off coupons. That meant I got 4 bags of expensive cat litter for $6, I would have paid $32 for that!
So in total I saved $7 at the bakery outlet, $26 at petsmart, $21 at price chopper and $87.03 at shoprite. I got an amazing haul for $132.81 I got a massive amount of groceries and will be able to feed everyone in the house including taking care of my kitties for at least the next two weeks. I feel very accomplished. And I didn't have to give up every spare moment of my time clipping and collecting coupons or stressing myself out.

No comments:

Post a Comment