Free groceries you say? Yes this is the last bit of money I have on my three $500 Kroger cards that I won. Originally I figured it would last three months. Instead it lasted until October 12, 2008. As you might remember I had to try to keep this trip under $85. Was I going to make it? What did I buy and how much did I save?
Admittedly at first I felt like I'd messed up. The cash register came up with the figure $113.34. I was a bit nervous but I knew I had some FREE coupons that would be coming off. The best deal of course was the FREE Edy's ice cream bars. FREE from another win and they would have been $3.39. Nothing is better than free.
Speaking of FREE, this week's AJC had an unexpected surprise in it. There were coupons for these new Pedigree dog treats that seemed to have Big Dog's name all over them. You could get one which is basically a vitamin treat or a hip and joint treat which is steak flavored. Since I normally get the two for one papers for $2.50 I had two coupons for these treats. That's great. They are normally $3.99 a piece. So another $7.98 came off my bill.
I bought the DiGiorno Pizza on sale for $5.49 with a coupon for $1 off which brought the price down to $4.49 and luckily they had the flavor Darryl likes which is the garlic bread crust with pepperoni. The other one was a plain cheese pizza.
Since we've been living over at the Cartersville house during the week we've been eating TV dinners. Stouffer's LC was on sale buy 5 get one free. This made the price six for $10 or $1.67 a piece. Lately every time I buy ten I get a coupon for $1.50 off my next purchase of ten. I bought 12 for $18.50 after coupon making them $1.57 per dinner.
Barb's Puffin Cereal was on sale today, buy one get one free. Look at all the things that make it great: 100% Natural, Good Source of Fiber, Multigrain, Low Fat, No Hydrogenated Oils or Trans-Fats, Dairy Free, No Cholesterol, No Artificial, Colors or Preservatives, and Kosher. I've been wanting to try it for awhile but at $4.50 a 12 ounce box it was too expensive to try. Now even at $2.25 a box I was a little leery. Miracle of miracles though I actually had two one dollar coupons. So instead of two for $4.50 I was able to buy two boxes for $2.50 about a dollar and a quarter a box. Now that's a no brainer. I hear they are good but we'll see. I had a hard time deciding between the peanut butter ones and the cinnamon. In the end I figured Darryl would eat the cinnamon. I had another coupon for buy ten get $1.00 off alpo canned dog food. Since they are normally 61 cents a piece it brings them down to 51 cents a piece. I also bought a 22 pound bag of Gravy Train Dog food. It was on sale for $7.59 and with a $1 coupon it was $6.59. Darryl needed bread, cheese and meat. Sara lee bread was on sale buy one get one free. They are really pushing it so a loaf of fancy bread was $1.40. I bought him some bologna on sale but with no coupon. I bought him some of the Butterball fried turkey slices on sale for $2.50 a pack and I had a dollar off making it $1.50 a pack. I hope he likes it.
When I got home I found the other butterball coupon. My one complaint is they tried to charge me $4.49 for my 12 packs of Pepsi. I didn't buy coke there because they had it "on sale" for 2 packs for $8. What were they thinking? Pepsi was on sale for 3 for $11. It didn't ring up as that I said something and they fixed it.
Now comes the important question is how much did I save? I used $29.65 worth of manufactured coupons. I received a .75 bonus coupon for one purchase that I don't know about. Then I received $29.10 in store coupons & Kroger plus savings. Did I make it under $85? YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I paid $83.69. If I had bought all this without sales or coupons I would have paid $143.19. Heck just without the coupons I would have spent $113. As it was I saved 58% on my groceries.
Interesting, since I saw one woman brag about her goal to save at least 10% on her groceries. So that's the end of it. I did get an invitation to participate in a store survey to win one of five $500 gift cards. I'll keep my fingers crossed. Oh by the way I thought I only had $85 left. Guess I had a little more than that because it shows a card balance of $5.02 not bad.
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