I then received a bunch of coupons from a lady who works at a newspaper that collects the extra inserts for me which allowed me to buy an additional 328 — which pretty much filled up the trunk of my car:

Since these needed to be refrigerated, I immediately took them to the Milpitas Food Pantry where we loaded them up into their refrigerator unit:

All together, they were worth $1039.92 which didn’t cost me a cent bringing the combined total of what readers have donated and what I have donated to $17352.25. If you would like to help out Penny Experiment, we’d love to have you participate. Not only will you be helping your local food bank, you will learn to save a significant amount on your own grocery shopping.

I was able to hit a couple of more stores the next day before the deal ended and picked up an additional 45 bags of nature Valley Nut Clusters and 18 bags of Wacky Mac vegetable spiral pasta worth $206.82 also for free:

The two days of purchases had a retail value of $714.70 and didn’t cost a cent. All will be added to the growing Penny Experiment food purchased master list. With this latest food, Penny Experiment has purchased $15,839.14 worth of food for $657.06. This is another small step toward the ultimate goal of $1 million worth of food for food banks. There is now only $984,160.86 left to go…

Upon delivering the items, Karen (the coordinator of the food bank) said that they were running low on cereal, so I said I would keep a lookout to see if I could find any deals (I buy cereal if I can find it for 90% or more off retail). This week Lucky supermarket was running a special where participating products were priced at $2.77 each. When you purchased 10 items, there was an instant $10.00 savings bringing the price down to $1.77 each. There was also a $10.00 Catalina coupon (those given with your receipt good for anything on your next purchase) when you purchased 10 items bringing the price down to $0.77 each. I had a large number of $1.00 off 2 Kellogg’s Frosted Mini Wheats coupons which brought the price down to $0.27 per item when purchased in groups of 10, or $2.70 for each group of 10 I purchased.

On my first trip I was able to purchase 110 boxes for $29.70:

and then another 190 boxes for $51.30 on a second trip (with my nieces helping to organize the boxes)

In total I purchased 300 boxes of cereal for $81.00 with a retail value of $1347.00, a savings of 94%. All will be added to the growing Penny Experiment food purchased master list. With this latest food, Penny Experiment has purchased $15,124.44 worth of food for $657.06. This is another small step toward the ultimate goal of $1 million worth of food for food banks. There is now only $984,875.56 left to go…

Kraft shredded cheese (2 cups) is currently marked at $1.99 each or $9.95 for 5 packages. There currently is a Catalina coupon deal (these are the coupons that you get from the register after you pay) that is worth $5.00 toward anything on your next purchase:

So $9.95 – $5.00 = $4.95

In addition, in some stores there are Kraft shredded cheese packages that have $1.00 off 1 peelie coupons stuck on them:

Use 5 of these coupons (one for each bag) which takes off another $5.00 and the cheese is free.

The best part of this deal is that even if you choose to keep the free cheese for yourself, you will still be helping to feed the hungry. That is because for every 5 packages that you buy, Kraft is donating 5 meals to Feeding America:

I ended up buying 15 cheese packages (I always leave plent so others can do the deal as well):

For a total cost of $0.07 (I also bought 2 tomatoes which I will give to the food bank to make sure the transaction were positive), I was able to get $53.05 worth of food:

This cheese will be added to the growing Penny Experiment food purchased master list. With this latest food, Penny Experiment has purchased $13,777.44 worth of food for $576.06. This is another small step toward the ultimate goal of $1 million worth of food for food banks. There is now only $986,222.56 left to go…

The food was taken to Tri-Valley Haven Food Pantry. Most of the food was immediately taken to the front to be distributed (there was a long line of people out front waiting to get in and there always seems to be a shortage of cereal for food banks), but there was enough that it wouldn’t all fit up front and some got stored in the back room:

Most of this was food that I had already accounted for with grocery store runs in the past. Although there haven’t been very good coupon deals the last couple of weeks, there were a few items that I did buy for the food banks. This included 8 Oscar Mayer Deli Creations sandwiches which were free after coupon:

and 4 Oscar Mayer hardwood smoked turkey franks which were also free (I also picked up some laundry detergent for myself in the transaction and that was where the $0.50 comes from):

I also had another 4 packages of 4 Oscar Mayer hardwood smoked turkey franks that I donated from my Eating Well On $1 A Day Challenge that were free. In total I was able to purchase $44.64 for $0.00.

In addition, I recruited my dad (it is dangerous to live in my family) to do some cereal shopping a couple of weeks ago. He purchased 31 boxes of Corn Flakes, 9 boxes of Raisin Bran and 9 boxes of Rice a Roni which had a retail value of $157.60 for $6.50:

Both my and my dad’s purchases will be added to the growing Penny Experiment food purchased master list. With this latest food, Penny Experiment has purchased $13,724.39 worth of food for $575.99. This is another small step toward the ultimate goal of $1 million worth of food for food banks. There is now only $986,275.61 left to go…

Since I have a bunch of catalina coupons still left over from other purchases that I will need to use up in the coming weeks, I decided to use some of them to buy Kashi cereal (something that even my sister would approve of). I had $1 off 1 peelie coupons for Kashi cereal that I found on the boxes and with last week’s cereal sale, that made them $1 per box. Then using the extra catalina coupons, they ended up being free. I ended up getting 4 boxes of Corn Flakes and 16 boxes of Kashi cereal with a retail value of $88.28 worth of food for $0.00:

I still have a huge pile of cereal to take to the local food banks, but am currently house sitting, so I probably won’t get to delivering it until sometime late next week.

I will add this cereal to the ever growing Penny Experiment food purchased master list. Adding this latest food, Penny Experiment has purchased $13,522.15 worth of food for $569.49. This is another small step toward the ultimate goal of $1 million worth of food for food banks. There is now only $986,477.85 left to go…

and I was able to buy the following items:

275 boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes: $959.75
50 boxes of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran: $199.50
45 bags of Padrinos tortilla chips: $143.55
8 boxes of Rice A Roni: $12.00
1 Lunchables sandwich: $2.29

Grand Total retail value: $1317.09
Grand Total spent: $14.46

In addition, I also donated 27 boxes of Corn Flakes from my Eating Well on $1 A Day Challenge, bringing the retail value of the food donations to $1411.32. I ended up taking the stuff to both the Milpitas Food pantry and the Tri-Valley Food pantry in several loads as I was in the area. The first load went to the Milpitas Food pantry:

load two went to Tri-Valley Haven Food Pantry:

Car load three also went to Tri-Valley Haven Food Pantry:

And there is still a large pile of cereal in my room that needs to be taken…

While the entire process of buying the food was exhausting, when we delivered the load of food to the Tri-Valley Haven food pantry, there was a long line of people waiting outside to pick up food. Tri-Valley had run out of cereal and so the boxes were taken up front and began to fly out the door. Seeing that the food was immediately going to people that needed made all the effort all the more worthwhile.

This will all be added to the Penny Experiment food purchased master list. Couponers have now purchased $13,433.87 worth of food for $569.49. This is one more tiny step toward the Penny Experiment goal of $1 million worth of food for food banks. There is now only $986,566.13 left to go…

The CapriSun Sunrise boxes were on sale for $1.49 each when you bought 5 of them (this deal is still going on through Tues 5/11). With the coupon it brought each down to $0.49 and then I used the $0.75 off coupons to bring the price down even further. I was able to get all 35 (a regular retail value of $94.15) for $0.98:

There is a student lunch program that Open Heart Kitchen runs that sends meals home with low income students over the weekend and these would work well with those, so I had my dad take them with him when he stopped by the other day since there offices are near his home:

I also was able to get Sunchips and six 10 packs of tortillas for $0.09 using a scrubbing bubbles money making deal. I kept the Sunchips and 1 bag of tortillas, so donated the other 5. That was $11.95 worth of food for $0.09 that I ended up delivering with all the cereal last week.

I have also started a challenge for May where I am trying to eat well on $1 a day. As part of that challenge, I have been donating the excess food to the food banks. That includes the following:

1 can of Pork & Beans (free)
5 boxes of cereal ($0.20)
50 packs of Philadelphia Cream Cheese Minis (free)
4 boxes (small) of Wheat Thins (free)

That was $155.39 worth of food for $0.20 which has also already been delivered. All three of these added together means that $261.49 worth of food was purchased for $2.08for a 99% savings.

All this food will be added to the Penny Experiment food purchased master list. Couponers have now purchased $12,022.55 worth of food for $555.03. This is another small step toward the goal of $1 million worth of food for food banks, and means that there is only $987,977.45 left to go…

I did the first transaction as 4 Fruit Loops using four $0.70 off of 1 coupons. This brought the price down from $5.56 to $2.76. I paid this out of pocket, but received a $3.00 catalina coupon (the ones that come out of the register) for my next purchase.

I then did a few transactions of 2 Apple Jacks and 2 Corn Flakes where the total again came to $5.56. Then 2 $0.70 off 1 Apples Jacks coupons and one $1.00 off 2 Corn Flakes coupon brought the price down $3.16. Then I used the $3.00 catalina coupon I had just received bringing the price to $0.16 out of pocket (or $0.04 per box)and I received another $3.00 catalina coupon.

I had enough coupons that I knew I could do this all day, so I asked to speak to the manager and said I would like to order 600 boxes of Corn Flakes and 20 boxes each of Apple Jacks, Corn Pops and Fruit Loops (unfortunately, I only had enough coupons for 60 boxes of these – the price for four boxes of Corn Flakes increased to $0.56 for 4 boxes, or $0.14 per box). Those 660 boxes came in today:

That was after I had already taken a carload home that contained another 11 cases (I forgot my camera the first time I went). Because this was a catalina deal and to make it work, I had to buy 4 boxes of cereal at a time, I spent over 2 hours at the cash register doing 9 transactions of two Fruit Loops / two Corn Flakes, 9 transactions of two Apple Jacks / two Corn Flakes, 9 transactions of two Corn Pops / two Corn Flakes and 137 transactions of four Corn Flakes (after I ran out of the other coupons). In the end I purchased $2376.28 worth of food for $81.68, or a 97% savings over regular retail price.

I didn’t have a chance to take photos of everything because I had to house sit tonight and was running late, but here are some of the boxes in the dining room and my room (there are more in other rooms):

I will spend next week driving these to the local food banks in my area (It took 5 carloads to get it all home) and these boxes of cereal will be added to the Penny Experiment food purchased master list. All the couponers combined have now purchased $11,761.06 worth of food for $552.95. This is another small step toward the goal of $1 million worth of food for food banks, and means that there is only $988,238.94 left to go…

I should be able to get more this coming week, but how many will be determined on whether I can find any coupons on the store shelves since I have pretty much diminished my supply.

In addition, I found a great deal on Oscar Mayer Lunchables. They are closing out one of their Lunchable sandwiches and they have gone on sale for $0.99 (Breaded Chicken and Mozzarella). There was a $1 off coupon for Lunchables in the 3/21 SmartSource Sunday coupon insert and I was lucky enough to have 27 on hand making them free (and actually earning a penny on them):

I purchased the 20 above and then another 9 at a store near the food bank:

But it gets even better. Lunchables is currently running a catalina coupon campaign (the coupons that come out of the register) where you get $1.00 back for anything on your next purchase for each Lunchables that you buy. That meant that I actually earned $27.00 on future purchases:

Most of the time I was supposed to get money back when making these purchases, but whether I did varied on the mood of the cashier I happened to be buying from at the time — and with 21 trips through the grocery store lines, there was plenty of different reactions. In the end, I ended up buying $572.70 worth of cream cheese and $57.71 worth of Lunchables for a total of $630.41 worth of food for -5.34 (not counting the $27.00 in coupons I’ll use in future purchases)

Since 230 packs of cream cheese were pretty much taking over the refrigerator, I made another run to the Milpitas Food Pantry. I also had a bunch of extra Windex multi-surface cleaner that I picked up for nearly free (although donated to the Milpitas food bank, it will not count toward the food total):

Karen was really happy to get the Lunchables since they make for very convenient food for the homeless that frequent the food pantry. They were immediately put into the refrigerator up front:

The Lunchables and cream cheese will be added to the Penny Experiment food purchased master list. Couponers have now purchased $9374.83 worth of food for $471.27. This adds another tiny step toward the goal of $1 million worth of food for food banks, and means that there is only $990,625.17 left to go…