One of my friends shared a great tip a few weeks ago, and it's been so helpful in my couponing efforts. Our local Dollar Tree has the Sunday paper for $1.00, and if I go there straight after church they always have plenty on hand. Yesterday I bought three papers since I knew there were several Cs in there I'd use at Kroger and CVS this week alone, and my trip to CVS today more than paid for that $3 worth of Sunday papers. Some weeks I only buy two, but most weeks it's three. It takes the same amount of time to cut Cs from three papers as it does one, so there's really no added time (or not much anyway). I do find that it does take a couple of hours to cut them out, sort them and add them to my binder, but I am not complaining! You can sign up for weekly e-mails from the insert folks (Red Plum, Proctor & Gamble, and well, I can't think of the other one right now) and you'll know exactly what coupons will be in the next Sunday paper.
CVS has a great sale this week, and I'll be back for more before this sale is over. Today I spent about 45 minutes in the store, and spent $8.89 and here's what I got:
3 Skippy peanut butter
4 Lipton tea bags (100 ct each)
1 Dawn Hand Renewal
1 Tampax Pearl
2 Soft Soap body wash
1 Gillette shave gel
I made these purchases in two transactions, and used $10 in ECBs. The only bad part is that I am now out of ECBs :-(( I will go back to CVS later this week and finish out one of the Soft Soap deals and will get some ECBs out of that, so that's nice - and certainly an incentive to pay more attention to which Cs I have with me when I shop. I left some at home today thinking I wouldn't need them, and of course I couldn't bear to buy something on sale without a C! I had two Cs that were expiring today that allowed me to get part of the Soft Soap deal, and the great CVS ladies here told me I could still get my ECBs on the deal as long as I come back this week and finish the required purchase. So I learned something else during today's trip: you don't have to buy all of the deal in one day to get the ECBs - that's something nice to remember if you forget to bring part of your Cs with you!
Kroger has great deals this week too. I consistently save 50% every time I go to Kroger. Sometimes I do even better. Today I purchased $112.47 worth of groceries for $57.26. I love that everything I purchase is high quality name-brand, and never do I pay more than if I were to buy the generic version. The key really is to use your Cs when the items are on sale, and keep in mind that Kroger doubles those Cs that are .50 cents or less. No way will I ever buy groceries at Wal-Mart again.
The gas savings are worth mentioning as well. We've never taken advantage of the Kroger gas savings until this week. .10 cents a gallon is a big deal when you buy as much gas as we do, and typically we only purchase BP gas as we save 5% there (.15 cents a gallon when the gas is $3/gallon). We can use our BP card and get a 1% rebate even when we buy Kroger gas so sometimes, depending on the current price, it's essentially the same as buying at BP.
Enough blogging for now.... I need to find some storage space for all these groceries!
Great job Karen! Thanks for the heads up on the Papers! Been visiting the dollar tree every Sunday since I last saw you. Haven't made it to CVS this week, but plan to do several of the deals...if they have stock left. Hope Samantha is catching on and saving some $$$$$$!
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