65 Boxes Nature Valley Granola with No Clipping Coupons $57.85

Well, it has certainly been a long while since I have posted here. The main issue has been that I have been traveling full time and traveling full time doesn’t lend itself to extreme couponing. Not having a base to collect the weekly inserts makes it virtually impossible to collect them in decent amounts to make purchases for the food banks worthwhile. Making matters even more complicated, traveling from city to city (many of which I am not familiar) makes it extremely difficult to know what grocery stores are available and what the deals are at these stores (since I also don’t have the weekly flyers for the stores in that particular area). The end result is that it makes it nearly impossible to coupon as I did when I had a set base.

nature valley granola boxes

I have therefore decided to continue on with this project without clipping coupons. That means that instead of getting discounts of 80% – 100%, I will only be able to get discounts in the 60% – 80% range most of the time. These are still good discounts over the regular retail price, but still not the deals I was getting in the past. That being said, I will try to let readers know if they can get an even better deal with coupons even if I am not using them, and it should also show that it’s possible to get pretty decent discounts when grocery shopping even without clipping coupons.

This week at Safeway (through Tuesday) Nature Valley granola bars are on sale for $1.49 each when you buy at least four. There is also a catalina coupon for $3.00 off your next purchase with the purchase of 5 boxes of Nature Valley granola bars (since this coupon is given to you at the cash register, I do not consider it clipping coupons). This means when you buy 5 boxes of Nature Valley granola (cost $7.45), you get a $3.00 coupon from the cash register for you next purchase making the price $4.45 for five boxes (you will need to pay $7.45 for the first purchase of 5 boxes, but if you decide to buy more, you can use the $3.00 catalina coupon in addition so all purchase after will be $4.45 — and you’ll get another $3.00 off coupon again so you will still have that at the end when you finished the granola purchases).

nature valley granola catalina coupon

I was able to purchase 65 boxes of Nature Valley granola with a retail value of $259.35 for $57.85. This was a 78% discount over the normal retail price or $0.89 a box without clipping any coupons. I have to admit that I have an affinity for Nature Valley because they also support our National Parks where I do most of my traveling these days, so it was an added bonus to this purchase. The final feather in the cap was that these all come with Box Tops for Education (some with double) that I will take off before donating to the food bank and will give to local schools so they can get needed supplies for free.

For those of you out there that have been saving coupons, there are some out there that you can use to bring the price down to $3.10 for 5 boxes ($0.62 per box).

$0.60 off 2 Nature Valley Granola Bars Printable Coupon
$0.60 off 2 Nature Valley Granola Bars Printable Coupon
$0.75 off 3 Nature Valley Granola Bars from General Mills 8/5 insert
$0.50 off 2 Nature Valley Granola Bars Printable Coupon

While the upcoming posts may not be of as much interest to you that coupon, it might be to those of you who have friends that like the idea of extreme couponing, but hate the idea of clipping coupons. No matter what you situation, I hope to show that you can greatly reduce the amount you spend by shopping the best deals each week (with coupons or without them) to save money for yourself (and hopefully for your local food bank)

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1000 Boxes of Pasta for Free

This is a fairly long story of how I and a local food pantry finally managed to secure 1000 boxes of pasta for a local food bank for free.

Rozoni pasta cases

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22 Packs of Trident Gum for Free

While I was buying 225 boxes of fruit snacks, I noticed a display near one of the cash registers for three new types of Trident Vitality gum: Vigorate, Rejuvenate and Awaken. On this display was a tearpad with buy one get one free coupons (up to $1.69 value) on it (I only found this display at one of the Safeway stores I visited, but it is worth keeping your eyes open for) and Safeway is currently having a sale of this gum through 3/15 of buy one get one free. Using the coupon with the current sale means free gum:

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225 Boxes of Betty Crocker Fruit Snacks

Yesterday I was was able to get 60 boxes of Betty Crocker Fruit Snacks for free at Safeway and I decided to make another run since this deal was ending. I ended up getting another 225 boxes of Betty Crocker fruit snacks worth $742.50 for free:

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Free Betty Crocker Fruit Snacks

I was able to get 60 boxes of Betty Crocker Fruit Snacks for free tonight at Safeway and I will try to stop by some more stores tomorrow in between the errands that I need to run.

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Rosie’s Place Highlights Laura’s Help

Laura, who writes The Couponing Experiment and has been making large contributions to Rosie’s Place as part of the Penny Experiment team received a nice write up on what she is doing in the Rosie’s Place newsletter:

While Laura has been making large contributions, even the small ones that anyone can pick up while doing their regular shopping are greatly appreciated.

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Skippy Peanut Butter 16 Jars

This was a last minute deal — I had some $1.00 off 1 Skippy peanut butter coupons expiring at the end of the month and there was a sale at Safeway that allowed me to get each jar for $0.49 — unfortunately, I only had 16 coupons to take advantage of this. I purchased $59.04 worth of food for $7.84 for an 87% savings off regular retail price:

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Free Nature’s Path Granola

Between traveling and the lack of deals at grocery stores lately, I haven’t been able to add much over the last couple of months. I am hoping that March being Frozen Food Month that there will be some good deals. Fortunately, my lack in finding deals has not been the case with others that have been helping out Penny Experiment and totally rocking in the deals they have been able to find. The combined totals from others should surpass what I have purchased which is absolutely fantastic.

I did have four coupons for Nature’s Path products that were about to expire which I used to get $17.96 worth of food for free. I received these in the mail when a box of cereal I had ended up having a problem that I informed the company about (it wasn’t even a complaint letter — it was simply letting them know they might have an issue because I do enjoy their product).

Natures Path granola

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6 Bottles of Free Maalox

I took advantage of the Maalox moneymaker scenario available at CVS this week to get 6 free bottles of Maalox (I have 2 different CVS cards — it is theoretically possible to have as many cards as you want, but I find that if I have more than two, I lose a lot of money when Extra Bucks expire before I can use them)

free Maalox

My local CVS didn’t have the Maalox bottles for $5.49, so I ended up purchasing more expensive bottles that allowed me to hit the $20 mark with only three. It was still a moneymaker, just not quite as much and I ended up using the small overage for some stuff I needed for myself. The total value of the 6 Maalox bottles was $44.94 with no cost out of pocket.

Readers and I have now donated over $30,000 worth of food to local food banks. If you would like to participate, I’d love to have you join. Not only will you be able to help your local food bank, you will learn to save quite a bit of money on your own grocery shopping.

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61 More Boxes of Ronzoni Garden Delight Pasta For Free

Yesterday was the last day that Ronzoni Garden Delight pasta was on sale for $0.99 at Nob Hill, so I made a special effort to stop by three stores in my area to purchase a few more boxes with my $1.00 off 1 coupons for the food bank. I ended up getting 61 more boxes:

61 boxes of ronzoni pasta

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