Penny Experiment

I can pretty much guarantee that I would have gone through my entire life never realizing that March is National Frozen Food month had I not decided to begin Penny Experiment. But since I did begin this, I do now know this fact and as a result, there are great deals on frozen food in March when using coupons.

Safeway is offering a $10 catalina (a discount for you next purchase on anything you want to buy that comes out of the register with your receipt) for every $25 worth of participating frozen food that you purchase during March. Since I was planning to make a trip to the food bank today and lack freezer space, I decided to give the discount a try. It worked out well:

To make the catalina work, I needed to make 3 separate trips through the grocery line and then another two to redeem rain checks I had gotten for Corn Flakes when they were on sale for $0.99 a box. Those 5 trips through the grocery line netted $175.22 worth of food for $10.26 — an 94% savings. This is how I was able to do it:

Now, I was able to do this at such a great discount because I had a few coupons for free Bertolli meals (a $6.99 value) that not the average person can get. That being said, anyone can still get all these for 80% + off by purchasing foods that are participating which have online coupons available. Basically I mixed and matched these 3 items:

Pillsbury Strudel ($1 off online coupon)
Yoplait Frozen Smoothiest ($1 off online coupon)
Smuckers Uncrustables ($1 off online coupon)

The first trip through I purchased five Pillsbury Strudel @2.50 each, two Yoplait Frozen Smoothiest @3.00 each and 1 Bertolli frozen meal @$6.99. This total came to $25.49 putting me over the $25 minimum to get the $10 catalina back. I then used five $1 off coupons for the Pillsbury Strudel, two $1 off coupons for the Yoplait Frozen Smoothiest and the free coupon for the bertolli frozen meal. These manufacturer coupons brought the price down to $11.50. I then used a $10.00 catalina I already had to bring the price paid out of pocket to $1.50 (most people would have to pay $11.50 out of pocket for this first transaction). With my receipt, I also received another coupon for $10.00 off my next purchase. I put these in the car and then went back to the frozen food section:

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