My Shopping Trips Today

I decided to take advantage of the Mega Sale going on at King Soopers today and stock up on some things we will be using in the future. The whole idea of couponing and stockpiling is to buy things when they are on sale at the lowest price and ideally with a coupon matched to it to get it at the lowest price possible. It is the idea of buying ahead and preventing buying things when they are "needed" and not on a great sale.

Here is a picture of what I got...
4 Boxes of Capri Sun Juice pouches
2 Boxes of Wheat Ritz
4 Boxes of Cheez-Its
4 Boxes of Nabisco Crackers
2 Bags of Tortillas
2 Cans of Hormel Chili
4 Bottles of Frank's Red Hot
4 Bottles of French's Yellow Mustard
3 Boxes Finish Dish Detergent
3 Bags Quaker Rice Cakes
4 Bags Green Giant Steamers Frozen Veggies
6 Boxes of Philadelphia Cream Cheese
10 Bags Kraft Natural Shredded Cheese

All 52 items for a total of...$41.72 out of pocket. Considering that the bags of cheese run $3.99 a piece and the Electrasol Dish Detergent are $5.99 a piece when not on sale, I think I did pretty good. My total before store discount and coupons was $154.25, I saved $112.53 so a total of 74% savings!!

You'll notice that this doesn't include any produce or meats and that is because I do most of that shopping at Sprouts. This was a trip to stock up on things that we use for snacks and other miscellaneous items.

You may be wondering what I will be doing with all of that cheese. Well, shredded cheese freezes well, so it will be going into my freezer until it is needed for my weekly meal plan.

I also wanted to give you some motivation to get started couponing and show you the items I got for FREE in the last week...

All of the items in this picture were completely free and some even better than free! The Quaker Rice Cakes were on sale for $.99 each and if purchased in increments of 10 items from the King Soopers mega deal ended up costing $.49 after the $.50/item discount. I had a coupon for $.75/1 that doubled up to $.99 (the actual cost of the item in the system) so I made $.50 to buy each of them. King Soopers doesn't actually pay you to take them, but the $.50 overage that I got on each of them was applied to the rest of my grocery bill.

The other item of note is the Bayer Glucose meter. There was a Register Reward deal at Walgreens this last week where if you purchased a Bayer Meter, you received a $5 RR. I had a coupon that was up to a $30 value and the meters were on sale for $14.99. I used the coupon and didn't even have to pay tax on the meter, so I walked out of the store with the meter and a $5 RR without spending a penny. I do not use the meters so I will donate it to someone I know who can benefit from it or donate it to a local organization. Now I have a $5 RR to spend on whatever I want at Walgreens and a meter to donate to someone who will appreciate it - I love it when stores pay us to take products!!

This deal is an example of why it is important to save all the coupons you receive whether you think you will use them or not. If I hadn't saved the Bayer Meter coupons, I wouldn't have made $15 from Walgreens (I actually bought 3 meters total during this promotion).

Leave me a comment if you got any great deals this week.