Another Kmart run and some Sunday shopping

I went back to Kmart today and the shelves were bare of a lot of the coupon deals, but what I really wanted was the cereal. Luckily, they had plenty of that in stock. I got 12 more boxes(my girls and I each got 4 boxes). I also found more of the ziploc vaccuum pumps which were free with the coupons.







On Sunday, I went to Home Depot with my husband and we got 2 free light bulbs and 2 free sink aerators. I then went to Bashas and got 4 boxes of pasta-free after coupons. On to walgreens for another chapstick, mitchum deodorant- $.24 after coupon and RR, some ramen noodles for fillers and some dawn dish soap-$.74 each after coupons. I used RR and paid $.74 oop for all of it. Last stop was the commissary for more free toilet paper and tissues. Well, the toilet paper was $.59 a pack after my coupons, but free with overage. I also got a bunch of pork and used $2 winetags on each. Most were under $2, so all were free and some created overage to be used on the toilet paper. I paid $1.06 oop for everything.

Kmart Super Doubles

I made a quick run to Kmart this morning since they are doubling coupons to $2.
I was not surprised to see other couponers there, but there were more than I thought. The cashiers were not very happy about the many couponers either and they were not shy about letting it be known that they didn't like coupons. But I was not easily deterred and I was having too much fun to be brought down by the negativeness. :)

I handed over all my coupons after she scanned the items to make it easier and it went smoothly with everything doubling as it should. I accidentally had 4 extra coupons when I got to the register (the limit is 25) and I pulled the extra items out to put them back, but they let me use those coupons in a separate order.

A lot of the items I got were free or $.50 and I didn't pay any more than $.79 for anything. Except the dog food. The dog food was not as good a deal as I had hoped-after coupons, it was $1.99 for the 4lb bag. I should have just put that back. I am happy about the cleaners as I needed some more. The Vaseline lotion I wanted was already wiped out when I looked for it, so I didn't get that. (I was a little disappointed to see many other couponers with their carts full even though the coupon limit was 25.)

In all, it was a good trip and I'm glad I went early. By the number of couponers in line still when I left, I anticipate the shelves being pretty empty before the end of the day. I paid $12 for everything here including tax and will get a $5 gift card back by mail for the Kellogg's cereals. I saved $99.52 with sales prices and coupons.

An Addiction?

I had my clothing swap today in a different part of town. It was a family affair as my husband and kids went too. We all worked hard, and were tired when we were done. (It was fun though!)
Of course, on the way home, I asked to stop at Walgreens and we stopped at every Walgreens we passed-literally. ;) Well, we missed one that was on the left, but we hit all the rest. I ran in each time while everyone else sat in the car. They were happy since the first Walgreens was right next to a Sonic. So while I was inside saving money, Dad bought everyone a slushie at Sonic. :)
There was more Easter candy than what is pictured here, but we ate some on the way home. I was very happy that I found the girl's underwear packages at one store marked on clearance. And I found the trial size dove and degree deodorants! These were all out of stock at my closest stores.
I rolled my RR like crazy and I spent about $2 oop and I have a $2 RR, a $3.50 RR, and a $6 RR left. Yes, I'm addicted, but it was a lot of fun.

Filling up the Pantry!

I've been doing a lot of shopping lately since there has been such great deals going on almost everywhere. But I haven't done a lot of posting. I've been away from my computer way too much to get any blog posting done. But my pantry is pretty full right now as well as my closets, laundry room shelves, etc. ;)





I did the Living Well promotion at Safeway getting 14 of the Bertolli pouches and a package of oreos. I used a free coupon for the oreos and $1 off coupons for the Bertolli and paid $14.xx oop. I got back the $10 Living well catalina and 7-$2 catalinas for the Bertolli for a total of $24 in cat's back.
Then I did some RR rolling at walgreens for the free toothbrush-used a $.75 coupon, free chapstick, and the free Scunci hair bands. I found one of the 2-in-1 packs of the Scunci, so that was great since those also produce the RR. With 5 girls, we go through a lot of these!



Here's another trip to Safeway for the Living well promo. I got 12 Bertolli sauces, 2 No yolk noodles-used $.75 coupons that made these $.25 each, and a 75ct canister of Clorox wipes-used a free coupon. I also used the $10 coupon from last time and 1-$2 Bertolli catalina and paid $.85 oop and got back another $10 cat and 6-$2 cat's.
I made a quick stop at the Commissary and got 10 packages of the 12ct Marcal toilet paper- $.59 each with the $2 coupons and 12 ham steaks which were $1.50 and I used $2 winetags for them and got overage. I paid $.10 oop and tipped the bagger $1. (walked it out to my car myself)
I stopped at a CVS and got the Colgate toothpaste that was free after ECB, the softsoap bodywash-free after ECB, two more of the Softsoap ensembles- free after ECB and coupons and 3 Adidas deodorants that were marked down to $2.50. I used $1 coupons on those and got back $2 ECB for each-so they were money makers. I also used a coupon on the body wash and the toothpastes, so made some money on each of those. The rest of the stuff was clearance I found-the book was $59 and the light bulbs were $.10 a box. The cookies weren't clearance, they were $1 and I added one to each of my toothpaste orders to use the extra from the ECB. I used ECB's on each order and paid less than $1 oop for all of it. I have a $3.99 and a $4.99 ECB left.



This was another trip to the commissary right before Easter and a stop at Bashas.
Bashas had the mustards for $.99 and they were free with coupons, plus they were printing out $1 catalinas for every 2 you bought, so more money makers. I got a bunch of these before Easter as the last day they were on sale was Easter Sunday.
Everything else in the picture is from the commissary and not pictured is a ton of candy for our 9 Easter baskets. I paid $3.74 for the whole order and tipped the bagger $2. I could have done better but I was losing track of the total with all the candy we were throwing in. Still, I was happy with that total and that trip was a lot of fun. I saved $175 in coupons in that one trip and we had a great Easter.

March spending/savings totals

I have finally finished updating all my receipts from March in my spreadsheet, so I thought I'd post my totals. This is from all my grocery related shopping in March including the drug stores and grocery stores. It includes all my groceries, cleaners, HBA items, and even extra newspapers bought for the coupons. (all food and items needed for a family of eight and three dogs and some fish.)
I start with the "regular" price of each item as listed on the receipt and then count how much I saved using store sales, coupons, and gift cards.
So for March I bought:
$1876.71 worth of groceries (full price)

I saved:
$637.65 store sales prices
$949.50 coupons
$48.97 gift cards used
For a total of:
$1636.12 savings or 87% saved

I paid:
$240.59 out of pocket for the month.

After rebates mailed, I will have paid:
$236.49

I did not send out many rebates this month, but I will try to send for more in April. It really helps to lower my totals and it's fun to see those checks coming in. We also ate out about three times this month, but that was not included in the grocery money. (That's from my spending money.) That's more than we normally eat out, but we were very busy this month.

Let's see if I can do even better in April!

You win some and you lose some

And sometimes when you lose, you win. If you are a long time player in the coupon game, you know that sometimes you will win the "battle" and sometimes you will lose. You also know that sometimes it's better not to fight it and just go with the flow.
I've had a few of those "losing" days recently. Today, I went to Walgreens to get the free monday movie from redbox. I did a couple of RR rolls while there-rolling the edge into the visine and the visine into the edge. I filled in with some ramen and a bag of chips (already eaten-I was hungry). Then, because Fry's is next door, I made a quick stop there for a few deals. I got some more mustard ($.25 each after coupon and getting a $1 catalina for every 2-so making $.25 on each mustard) and I got some pizza crusts-free when you buy 4 with coupons. Then I had a raincheck for the granola bars for $1 each and I had $1/2 coupons which would make them $.50 each. Well, when I got the rain check, I put my coupons with it, and didn't notice until the cashier handed me back my coupons today that they expired 3/31. So, now I paid $1 a box and that's a lot for me. I also had some ham I was going to buy-prepackaged lunch meat ham. I had $2 ham wintags to use that say "save $2 on ham", but the cashier thought the winetags were for a wholae ham only and called the manager. The manager decided it was good for deli ham or ham from the meat department. So I took the ham off my order and got my coupons back. The wt's would have given me a little bit of overage, so I had added some syrup to my order to use that overage. (to go with all those free waffles) So, in all, I paid about $5 more than I had planned for this order. So I "lost" that round, but it wasn't worth fighting about, so I just said ok.





Yesterday, I had also stopped at a different fry's looking for newspapers (they were out already) and got some mustard and some fixings for dinner (cream soups, spinach, chips). Well, I hit the u-scan and I had 14 mustards. When I handed the girl all my coupons, she scanned some of them then called a manager. They told me then that they could only double 3 of the same kind and she had doubled 3 of each coupon I had given her-6 total. They would take the rest at face value if I wanted. I asked to take the other mustards off and got my coupons back. They were very nice about it, so I said "no problem" and just took the extras off my order. But because I had already scanned all the mustards, the coupons had printed already. So I "bought" 6 mustards and got coupons for all 14 of them. So, even though I "lost" that time, I actually "won".

I also went to the commissary and unfortunately, I only found 3-KY's on the shelf, so no big overage shopping for me there. I did find some St. Ives trial sizes that gave me $.41 overage each. But I was very happy to find the marcal small steps products. I used my free product coupons for the tissues and then I used $2 coupons on the 12 pks of toilet paper that were $2.59 each ($.59 after coupons). I grabbed 2 salads and paid $.25 each after $1 coupons, 1 pouch tuna (that's all that was on the shelf) for $.24 after coupon and I found 2 boxes of Success rice that had $1 peelies on them. None of the rest of the boxes had the coupons, so I grabbed those 2. They were $1.39 before coupons, so $.39 each. I paid $.89 oop for everything.