Score!

I love a bargain, especially a grocery bargain! Thanks to the lovely and talented Kim F, I found out that Kroger was running a "buy 8 Kraft items get $7 back" sale. And cream cheese at $1 per brick was included in the deal. And I had some coupons for cream cheese. So I got 8 blocks of light cream cheese for less than 10 cents each! Score!

I also realized they had Post cereals on sale for $1.35 a box, and I had coupons for those too, so I got a bunch of fun cereal for about 70 cents a box. Score!

Then I stopped by Meijer and they had a ton of boxed goods marked half off. And yes, you can still use coupons when things are marked down, and you better believe I did! There again, I got some interesting cereals (usually I don't buy a lot of cereal, and only if it's less than $1.50 a box because it's expensive) for around 70 cents a box, and some cake mixes for about 30 cents a box. Score!

A final note about bargain shopping: if you have a Walgreens nearby, check out their monthly rebates. Every month they have these Easy Saver rebates where you can get a 100% rebate on some items (usually toiletries like shampoo and so forth, or makeup, medicines, etc). Then if you get your rebate in the form of a Walgreens gift card, they tack on an additional 10% to the value of the card. And then you just use the card to pay for your next month's worth of free items. AND since most of the time the rebates are on normal items like Pantene shampoo or Excedrin or whatnot, you can use coupons and actually get them to PAY YOU to take their products home. Seriously. I have not paid for shampoo, conditioner, medicine, toothpaste, or
any number of other things in months.

They also run sales that are great sometimes. For example, one month they had Aquafresh toothpaste for 99 cents a tube. It's usually about $2.50 in the regular grocery store. Then I had a bunch of coupons for $1.50 off, so they wound up paying me almost $3 (once tax was factored in) to take home their toothpaste. It's hard to beat that!

I take home about $40 worth of free stuff every month, all for just the cost of my first month's investment, which was only about $15 (every month I add a bit more to my card since I use coupons and get the 10% off). Walgreens figures you are going to be a sucker and while you're there you'll buy their high priced items, but you are too smart for that! Just buy the stuff they pay you to try. It's a beautiful thing.

It probably sounds like I spend hours on this, but I don't. I check the sale circulars and coupons every Sunday, and then plan my menus and shopping around what's on sale, stocking up where I can. I go to Walgreens once a month to get the free stuff. All the stores I go to are within a few minutes of each other, so I get this accomplished fairly quickly without wasting gas. It's like a sport, really. :)