I made a grocery shopping run late last week ans was able to get $146.67 worth of food for $16.48 which is a savings of 89% and that includes a stupid mistake I made that added on a few more dollars that I should have paid if I were paying better attention.
The Safeway advertising flier said that Safeway was selling Cheerios for $1.50 a box when you purchased them in groups of 4. Since I had 4 $1.00 coupons from signing up with Cheerios to get them sent to me by email, that meant that each box was only $0.50. Then I still had a $1.50 off my next purchase coupon which I had left over from my last shopping trip which allowed me to buy the 4 boxes of Cheerios (a $13.96 value) for a total 50 cents.
While I was at the store I realized that they were running a number of other discount deals that I had coupons for at home, so I went back for another trip. This time I purchased 20 bags of Nature Valley Nut Clusters, 5 boxes of Quaker Oatmeal and 4 Bertolli frozen meals. The total came to $19.98 which was more than I had anticipated.
This trip made clear that when you use a lot of coupons, you really need to know exactly what the final price should be because there are often mistakes. In this case, the discount for buying the Nature Valley Nut Clusters in groups of four didn’t all go through meaning that I paid regular price for 4 of them. This meant a trip to the service counter to get that money refunded.
My big mistake was with the Quaker Oatmeal boxes. They were on sale where if you purchased 2 boxes, you received 3 free. Their regular price was $4.99, but somehow I got it into my mind that I only had to pay $4.99 (not the $9.98 for 2 boxes) to get the deal. I thought I was buying 5 boxes for $0.99 after using four $1 coupons I had, but in reality it came out to $5.99 for the five boxes. That is $1.25 a box which I would have assumed was great in the past, but I know it is possible to get them for $0.50 a piece so it was a rather big mistake on my part (I am amazed that I have progressed enough in couponing that I can actually make that statement)
The 4 Bertolli frozen meals I had coupons to get them for free. They come up on the receipt at $6.99 each, but their regular price was $8.99 each. That meant that I ended up getting $132.71 worth of food for $15.98 on the second trip for a savings of 88%. Combining the two trips, I purchased $146.67 worth of food for $16.48 and this is what I ended up with:
Cheerios – 4 boxes
Nature Valley Nut Clusters – 20 bags
Bertolli frozen dinners – 4 bags
Quaker Instant Oatmeal – 5 boxes
All this will be added to the master list of all the food purchased for Penny Experiment. Couponers have now purchased $923.06 worth of food for $95.74 with $999,076.94 left to go to reach the $1 million goal…
