Military Benefits

The Commissary is one of many benefits for the military community. It's one of the benefits I'm very grateful for! Now, granted, a lot of items are not really any cheaper at the commissary than at the regular grocery stores, but some things are almost always cheaper here. And while I can get a lot of free stuff at other stores and even make money on some of their sales, the commissary has a great option for free groceries. In coupon terms it's called "overage". This means that if you have a coupon for more than the cost of the actual item, you get the full value of the coupon off your order. Thus creating "overage" you can spend on other groceries.

By now, you are probably getting tired of hearing about my favorite overage item- KY. But it is still my favorite and it helped me pay for all these groceries today. At the commissary, the KY is $1.85 and my coupons are for $3 off. So, for each tube I get, I get an extra $1.15 to use for my other groceries. But since these coupons expire soon (July 1), I have to start using all of them up that I still have left. So today was a stock up day.

I got everything you see in the picture for $.46. The KY paid for most of it, though I did not put them in the picture. I also got a big bag of dog food shown below. My daughter opened it and started feeding the dogs before I took my photo above.

Some of my good deals today were:
23.5 lbs of chicken @ $.50 lb
6 lbs ground beef @ $1.29 lb
1 Jar of Pace for $1.57 and used $4 printable coupon from their online game
5 bags of rice-2 lbs each bag for $.62 each after $1 coupons
2 cans Campbell's cream of mushroom soup @ $1.29 each and used $3 coupon sent from company

I also stocked up on snacks for our trip and some essentials we needed like bread and flour.

My total saved in coupons was $191.00 and I spent $.46 oop plus $2 tip to the bagger. (We always take our own bags out.)

So, if you can shop at the commissary, make sure you look for good coupons to go with the great prices there and definitely look for coupons that provide overage!

I Won!

As a frugal (cheap!) person and a lover of all things free, and as a hunter (maybe stalker?) of the next great deal, I have found a new passion. Sweepstakes! Yep, like many of you, I only entered these occasionally because I "never win" and I thought it was a waste of time. I also forget to go back and enter again or even check on what I have entered.
I have heard of people who are "sweepers" and enter all the time and win a lot. I just thought they were lucky, or at the very least, spent a lot of money on stamps to enter these things. (Of course, now with everything on the internet, you don't even have to mail in for sweeps very often anymore.)
About a month ago, I found a site called "Sweeties Sweeps" and she has a whole different perspective on sweeping. She says it's not luck, but persistence that wins. Well, I liked what she had to say and I decided to try it. I have been "sweeping" regularly now for a little more than a month and I have been winning!
Nothing big yet, but I have won movie tickets, visa gift cards, sunglasses, song downloads, free item coupons, and six flags tickets! In all, I have won about $700 worth of prizes! Of course, because the "worth" of some of these prizes seem a little inflated to me- the deal hunter who would never pay full price for this stuff, the estimated value to ME for all I've won is still over $550. (This is me taking the price I would buy the item at as the value.)
I have received some of my prizes already and there's still a lot I'm waiting on. The item my girls are holding in the photo is the first prize I won when I started in May. It is the Crayola Glow station on the go and I got it yesterday in the mail! It was perfect timing since this will be a great item for the car on our trip next week! And it's an item I probably would never have bought. But as you can see, the girls are very excited about it! Hopefully it will keep them occupied and happy for at least 10 minutes in the car. ;)
I have also gotten in the mail this week- 5-$25 visa cards and two free item coupons and I have downloaded and printed 4 movie tickets and 4 six flags tickets this week also!
I play the sweeps online at night (I'm a night person anyway) so I still have plenty of time to take care of the kids, and do my coupons and household stuff during the day time. In fact, the only thing it's changed in my schedule is I'm watching less TV. (Or watching less of whatever my husband has on since he's usually in charge of the remote and most of the time I am not even interested in what he's watching.)

So if you want to win too- I highly recommend checking out Sweeties Sweeps- link on the left, and read some of her articles. She knows what she's doing and she's very helpful!

Free Chocolate

If you haven't heard, Mars brand (M&M's) is giving out coupons for a free candy bar each Friday. One candy bar is not a huge freebie, but, free is free! You can sign up each Friday to get one, but there's a limit of 4 coupons per address for the entire promotion.
It says you will get your coupon in six weeks, but I have already received the coupon I signed up for last week. Save these for a b1g1 sale and you can get two free candy bars!
Here's the link to sign up today (Friday):
Mars Free Chocolate

Free Food Wednesdays!

Arby's is offering free menu items each Wednesday through August 26!
Today only you can get a free Roast Chicken club sandwich with any soft drink purchase. There is a limit of one per person, so if you want to feed the family, you will need to bring them all with you.
*This is not Nationwide and only at participating stores, so call and check with your stores first to see if they are participating.

Here's a list of all the upcoming Wednesday's free items:

JUNE
10 Free Roast Chicken Club with any soft drink purchase
17 Free Regular Sidekickers® with any sandwich purchase
24 Free Regular Roast Beef with any soft drink purchase

JULY
1 Free Regular Beef 'n Cheddar with any soft drink purchase
8 Free Orange Cream Swirl Shake with any sandwich purchase
15 Free Regular Roast Beef with any soft drink purchase
22 Free Roastburger with any soft drink purchase
29 Free Iced FruiTea with any sandwich purchase

AUGUST
5 Free Regular Roast Beef with any soft drink purchase
12 Free Roast Chicken Club with any soft drink purchase
19 Free Iced FruiTea with any sandwich purchase
26 Free Regular Beef 'n Cheddar with any soft drink purchase

Cheap grocery deals for the day

I did a big circle of errands today and decided to get some deals in while I was out.
I first hit Safeway and got some hot pockets and cheerios @ $.50 each, Del monte fruit cups and velveeta shells cups @ $.25 each and some Jello pudding @ $.16 each-all prces after coupons and the $5 off $10 deal. *The safeway deals continue next week too!

Then I went to fry's and got some mac & cheese @ $.39 each, Tombstone pizzas @ $2 each after coupon, and Bar-s hot dogs @ $.75 each after coupons. *The fry's pizza deals are still good through next week too.

Next was Staples for the $1 after rebate printer paper and photo paper. The limit on these rebates is 2, so I got 2 of each. I also needed some cd's, so I got a 50 pack for $8.98 and I found these cute draw on/wipe off placemates for $.50, so I got 2 for the little girls.

Last, I stopped at Walgreens and picked up 2 packs of Nabisco cookies- on sale for 2/$5 and I had a coupon for $1/2. (I also got a $3 RR back for these.) I picked up 2 of the smaller packs of oreos/fig newtons- on sale for $1.25 each and some Johnson's baby powder- $1 each and got $1 RR back. I used 2 b1g1 free coupons for the candy bars and the cashier took off $.79 for each coupon. (They rang up $.80/.79 and .89/.70) Then I used the ad coupon for 2/$1 candy bars and it took off another $1.18, so I paid $.42 total for 4 candy bars. I also picked up all of these crackers they had left since they were marked down to $.25. My youngest DD loves any kind of crackers, so it's nice to be able to stock up on these for such a good price. Of course, when I got them home, not only was she eating them, but all the rest of the kids were carrying around their own box too! I used a $10 RR on all of this and paid @ $2 oop with tax.

It's so fun getting stuff for free!

This is why I love Walgreens!

Walgreens has these glucose meters on sale again this week, but this time it's better than last month's deal. The Breeze2 and the contour are both on sale for $10. Then with the coupons that are out, they are free. I only paid tax and since they are on sale for a lower price then before, I even pay less tax. I paid about $.83-$.88 for each one. THEN you get a $10 RR when you buy one!!! So I got paid over $9 for each monitor I got. I went out yesterday with my husband and we hit 5 stores and got 10 monitors. My oop on these was about $9 and I got $100 in RR to spend!! (Remember to do only one monitor in each transaction as you can only get one coupon at a time.)

I spent one of the $10 RR yesterday for more newspapers and I spent 2 more on an ipod docking alarm clock/radio for my older dd for her birthday. So I have $70 left to spend. I used some of my $5 RR from last month's deal to get this pool for my other dd for her birthday.




The Ecotrin is also on sale again for $2 and there's a $2 coupon in 5/17 SS which makes it free. Then you get a $2 RR for that. So again, free except tax and I made $2 on those. I only got one of these so fr as I didn't have the rest of my coupons cut out, but I will go back and get more of these this week.

Some free shopping with RX rewards

Sometimes you have to shop without coupons and that's why I love things like the Pharmacy coupons! Today is my daughter's 6th birthday and she wanted some Kid Cuisine for dinner. Of course these were not on sale and I only had a $.50/2 coupon that did not double. So I went to the store to get a Kid Cuisine for her and one for her little sister. Since there's no way I'll be eating a Kid Cuisine, she decided the rest of us could eat sloppy joes- her second choice. (We have all the stuff for that at home already.) We also got some ice cream to go with her cake and I got some of the sale items like milk for $1.47, mac& cheese 3/$1, Ramen 6/$1, and Koolaid for $1 each and I had a $1/2 coupon and a $1.50/2 for the Country time. She also wanted strawberries to go on top of her cake. (Of course, those were on sale last week!) I grabbed 2 Kraft salad dressings and used the $1.50 coupons on those and then used the $1 on produce when you buy 2 dressings coupon for the strawberries.

Then my other daughter is turning 15 tomorrow. And she wanted chinese, so I got some chicken and some orange sauce for her meal.

So I paid nothing and with my coupons, sales prices and pharmacy rewards, I saved $62.28. I still have $20 left of my rewards to spend later.

Free Redbox movies

Redbox has stopped sending their free movie codes out every Monday. They are now sending a code only on the first Monday of the month. So, being that today is the first Monday of June, here's the code for a free movie tonight:
FM63H7
Remember if you have more than 1 credit or debit card you can use this code with each different card you have. I usually get 2 movies with each code-one for the kids and one for the adults. Hurry! Code is good until midnight.