Economic Endeavors

As I mentioned in my previous post, I do the bulk of my grocery shopping at Aldis every two weeks. However, each week I make at least one trip to Publix to stock up on the items I can get for free or nearly free after coupons. This week was a great week, I was able to get $86 worth of groceries for $1.20.

Here's how I did it:

First, I went to the Publix thread at hotcouponworld.com. I clicked on the thread for this week's sales ad and looked it over for any items I could get for free or nearly free after coupons. All of the coupons I used this week were printed from the internet.

The items that caught my attention were:

Post Cereal, Assorted Varieties, Selects, 13 to 16-oz, or Grape Nuts Flakes, 18-oz BOGO $3.99
-$2/1 PRINT (if trail mix crunch included)
-$2/1 PRINT(if Pecan bunches included) (I couldn't get this coupon to print, or I would have gotten 8 boxes of this cereal as well)

Kellogg's Pop-Tarts, Assorted Varieties, 8-ct, 14 to 15.2-oz box BOGO $2.39 **Fuel For School Rebate Eligible Item
-$.75/1 Target IP PRINT
-$.55/1 Blueberry Muffin PRINT

Kraft Velveeta Shells & Cheese Dinner or Rotini & Cheese or Kraft Deluxe Mac & Cheese, 9.4 to 14-oz box, Assorted Varieties BOGO $1.99
-$1.50/2 PRINT


I have two laptops at home, and my neighbor also has 2 laptops at her house that she lets me use to print coupons (I pay her $10 every time she needs her ink cartridge filled, every couple of months, and it's worth it for all the money the coupons I print at her house saves me at the grocery store!). Typically I can print 2 coupons per computer, so that gives me 8 coupons for each product to use.

Because Publix takes competitors coupons, using the target coupon for the pop tarts in conjunction with the printable manufacturers coupon made each box free plus some overage.

So my shopping list looked like this:

• 8 boxes PopTarts Blueberry Muffin flavor, B1G1 @ $2.39, Use 8 $0.55/1 coupon and 8 $0.75/1 Target coupons, ($1.68 overage on 8)

• 8 boxes Kraft Deluxe Mac n Cheese, B1G1 $1.99, use 4 $1.50/2 coupons, $1.96 for 8 boxes

• 8 boxes Trail Mix Crunch, B1G1 $3.99, use 8 $2/1 coupons, ($0.04 overage for 8 boxes)

• 1 lb Chicken $2.99

• 1 bag salad mix $2.00

• 1 DiGiorno Flatbread Melt (I had a coupon that was mailed to me from a promotion a while back that made this item free).
  

$38.47 before coupons

$5.23 for whole order after coupons

I also used a $5/$30 CVS printable coupon which made the chicken and salad mix free, but added on a bag of Funyons and a some M&Ms for my two daughters at the checkout, and my total was $1.20 after coupons. One of my best trips to Publix yet!

Playing the matching game with sales and coupons each week allows me to stockpile groceries for my family and keep down my weekly grocery budget. It only takes me about an hours time of planning and printing, and it really is a lot of fun to me to see the total come down at the register as each coupon is scanned.

Here's a pic of all my loot (and my adorable 3 year old, who couldn't resist sneaking into the picture!).