I snuck out to Dillons (Kroger affiliate) on Tuesday night after the all the little ones were in bed. It was a sort of spur-of-the-moment shopping trip and I didn't have but a few minutes to plan it.
I had gotten a hot tip from a friend earlier that day that the ThinkThin bars were on sale for $1 each and I had a bunch of $0.50/1 coupons from organic coupon booklets which would make them free after they were doubled. I wasn't sure if the bars would still be on sale when the new ad came out on Wednesday so I decided to just run to the store and buy those and see what other deals I might be able to pick up, too.
Here's what I came home with:
1 Healthy Choice Frozen Meal–on sale for $1.65, used the $2/1 coupon
which was available for a brief time earlier this week,
FREE-plus-overage after coupon
1 Tropicana Orange Juice–$4.99, used free product coupon which was available a few weeks ago for a limited time, FREE after coupon
1 Starbucks Ice Cream–$3.49, used free product coupon from the Facebook promotion–no longer available, FREE after coupon
1 Kellogg's Rice Crispies–$3.69, used free product coupon sent to me recently from Vocalpoint, FREE after coupon
1 Chiquita Apple Bites–$1, used free product coupon here, FREE after coupon
1 Chiquita Pineapple Bites–$1, used free product peelie, FREE after coupon
20 ThinkThin bars–on sale for $1 each, used 20 $0.50/1 coupons from Mambo Sprouts coupon booklet (doubled), FREE after coupons
4 bottles of Sobe Life Water–on sale for $1 each, used 2 B1G1 coupons,
$0.50 each after coupons (my hubby loves these in his lunches so I've
been buying them whenever I can get them on a decent sale)
1 Vanilla Soy Milk 1/2 gallon–on closeout for $2.68, used $2/1 coupon here, $0.68 after coupon
My total before coupons and sales was $65.28. After coupons? I paid $5.44–a savings of 94% according to my receipt.
Now, of course, I'd never pay full price for pretty much any of those items, so the savings is quite inflated, but it's still fun to see!
If you're new at the whole coupon thing and wondering if it really works, I hope my shopping trip above encourages you that signing up for the free coupon offers and printing the high-value coupons really does result in big savings for minimal effort.
It takes time to learn the ropes of couponing, but if you keep at it, it will begin to pay off in big savings dividends over time. Plus, one of the side benefits of using coupons and shopping the sales is that you get to try some new products you might not try otherwise! After all, who can beat free when it comes to groceries?!
I'll share more about our other grocery savings this week when I post Super Savings Saturday.