75 cents off milk!

How would you like $.75 off of 2 gallons of milk?  Click HERE to get the coupon.  You can also access these same coupons on Swagbucks and get 10 swagbucks just for using the coupon! 

Be sure to print the coupon twice!

Free Pasta

Do you want nearly 9 pounds of pasta for $1?  Smith's has pasta on sale for $.49/package (when you buy 10 participating items).  This link has coupons for 4 of the types of pasta on sale.  Using the 4 coupons you can get 8 packages of pasta for free.  Buy 2 other participating items to total 10 items.  (I chose to buy more pasta.)

If you don't eat the pasta that the coupons are for, continue donating it to your local food pantry.  This Saturday is the letter carrier's food drive.  Just put the pasta, and other food, in a bag by your mail box.

Cereal at Smith's

I'm so excited about my shopping trip at Smith's, that I have to write about it.  I just bought 20 boxes of cereal, 4 bags of chocolate chips, 2 small jars of spices, 2 gallons of milk, and grapes.  I paid $38.53, plus brought home a gift card for $5.  Essentially $33.53.
How did this work?
Buy 4 General Mills items, get a $5 gift card.  I chose to buy each set of 4 cereals as separate transactions, so that I could use the $5 gift card on the next transaction.  Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios, Honey Nut Chex, Wheat Chex, 2 types of Total, several types of granola bars, and a few other types of cereal are on sale for 4/$10.  Buy 4, get $5 gift card, essentially it's $1.25/box.  Great deal on 14 and 15 oz. cereals.  Add a coupon to that, and the the box of cereal costs between 70 and 92 cents per box.  Yeah!  So I bought 20 boxes!  You can find coupons here and here.  You can usually print twice.  If you use Swagbucks, you can also get coupons through your account, and you get 10 swagbucks per coupon used!  Yet another reason to sign up!  If you get the newspaper, there are a lot more coupons on these items there.
I bought 4 bags of chocolate chips, because if you buy 4, you get a catalina for $3 off your next purchase (I used it today).  The chips were on sale for $2.  Thus I essentially paid $1.25/bag.  If I had coupons for this I could have paid less.  Not a horrible price.  I prefer to get them for $1/bag, but when's the last time I've seen that price? 
The spices were in the discount cart at the back of the store.  Milk I needed.  Grapes were 99 cents/pound.  I like grapes.

Shopping Secrets

I bought all of these groceries (plus 2 cheesesticks) for $24.07. The regular price for these items would total over $60. So how did I get over 50% savings? Coupons! Because of coupons, the package of Olay bar soap, 2 packages of Ricola cough drops, and 3 cans of cream of chicken soup were FREE! The Chunky Campbell's soup was 50 cents per can, the 32 oz. Dannon plain yogurt was 50 cents...You get the idea. So how did I find the coupons? Grocery Smarts. This website takes the advertised sales of stores, and compares them to coupons, both online and in the circulars found in Sunday newspapers. So, even if you don't get the newspaper, you can still do a lot of couponing, and save a lot of money. All you need is the Internet, and a printer.
Another thing that I like about Grocery Smarts, is that it rates each item, using stars, telling you know how good of a sale it is. You can find stores in your state by clicking on your state in the drop down menu on the top left side of the main screen. There is a tutorial on how to use the site here.

Coupon Mom offers a similar service. It has some features, like sorting, that I really like.

Coupon Mom

I just discovered couponmom.com.  It is really neat.  I just choose from a drop down menu what state and store I wish to look at, and it will tell me what is on sale at the store and what coupons I can use to help me save even more money.  I ordered a weekend subscription to a newspaper this week, so I am on my way to saving. 

Coupons! (again) and a shopping warning

Last coupon post I made I said that I wasn't into coupons. I just began house-sitting, and enjoyed the last month of the owners' newspaper subscription, and therefore the coupons. Now that I've used coupons, though, I think I may continue to.

10¢ per ounce used to be my price point for cereal. And I thought that this was a really good deal. Actually, I still think it is a really good deal, but I see now that I can do much better than this. On Saturday I bought 8 boxes of name-brand cereal for $8, averaging at less than 7¢/ oz.

So, today I have been researching online coupons, with the help of my aunt (thank you!). I have found The Krazy Coupon Lady to be very helpful. All You also has a lot of printable coupons.

On Saturday I also bought pasta. It was advertised at being 50¢ per 12-16 oz. package. I planned to only get 16 oz. packages. After arriving home, I discovered that I had bought 5 12 oz. packages and 1 24 oz. package (priced at $2). The lesson: look at what you are purchasing, to make sure you got what you really wanted.