We are trying to cut back on groceries as much as we can. I would say we probably spent a minimum of $500/month at the grocery store, previously. We are trying to spend between $50 to $75/week now. I was able to buy all of the above for $12.53! This will be quick grab n go breakfasts and snacks for the coming weeks. It’s a very nice stockpile and I’m proud of it!
My first stop was Albertsons, and I got:
10 Gatorades (these will be for my son to take to his Track Meets and a few for the girls for softball - these ended up being TWENTY cents each… they are the big ones too… the small ones are $1.25 at the concessions stand!). (*see note below)
20 boxes of Quaker breakfast cookies, bars, and squares. (*see note below)
4 boxes of Pasta Roni (which you can’t see in the picture, they are right of the juice).
1 pkg Lays Stax
3 bottles of Langer’s Cran Raspberry juice
My second stop was Target, and I got:
4 packages of Lipton Tea On The Go. Regular price .99, Free after $1.00 printable Target coupon from here.
7 pkgs of Lay’s Cracker Stacks (*see note below)
What you don’t see pictured is some of the Gatorade bottles, they are in the back of my van for softball games. Also, I got free pizza hut express breadsticks at Target coupon here.
I also bought some fresh fruit, peanut butter, butter and a few other things that were full price. I spent under $25 on all of it though! Taking this and the $25 spent a few days ago on meat and other staples, we still have $25 left to spend for the week without breaking budget. Yay!
*Some notes:
I have been purchasing coupons on eBay. We do get the Sunday paper, but only one of them. I wish we had access to more coupon inserts, but we don’t. I have not yet gotten the hang of trading coupons on various coupon forums, but that is something I’ll look at in the future.
I do cut every coupon that comes in the Sunday paper now so I’ll have a pretty good supply before too long, but for deals like the above Quaker or Gatorade, I wanted to stockpile. There are no limits on how many coupons a person can use (in most cases), so I turned to eBay. For around $2 I was able to buy coupons in quantities of up to 20 for these products, $2 turned into a $20 savings, and I’ll take that any day! eBay is a great resource for frugal shopping and purchasing coupons!
When I get a store ad, I sit down and compare the ad specials to the coupons I know I have or that are out there. Albertsons has been having some amazing sales going on lately. I took advantage of 2 of them this week. One was the Quaker, buy 10 for $12, with $1 coupons on each item, that makes them each .20!! The other one was the Gatorade/Pasta Roni one, that one was buy 15 for $12 or .80 each. I purchased .50 off coupons from eBay which brought those .80 gatorades down to .30 each which is a nice savings. I’m not buying stuff we won’t use, I’m buying stuff we do use and at a fraction of a price.
I saved $9 at Target. My total out of pocket was only $4.00!!
I saved $106.85 at Albertsons. My total out of pocket (including some reg. priced groceries as well) was $24.68!! The cashier AND the lady behind me were both totally wow’ed and asked me how I did it. This is the first time I’ve saved that much, I was almost afraid the coupon police would jump out and arrest me LOL…. so I didn’t really say much other than I use lots of coupons and they had an excellent ad. :o)
I have one more stop to make this week at Walgreens to get dish soap and possibly some Aveeno products. If you are interested in reading more about saving money or getting items you use every day for FREE, these are my two absolute FAVORITE sites to check out daily: Money Saving Mom and Hot Coupon World
Check ‘em out! (Note: Mute my obnoxious music play list first.)
