Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Giant Eagle's Fuel Perks

I'm sure if you shop at Giant Eagle, you understand their fuelperks and foodperks. I'm going to explain it in case you haven't shop at Giant Eagle and you may be considering doing so. You use a reward card at Giant Eagle.

For every $50 you spend in the store, you receive a $.20 "fuelperk" credit. This amount just keeps adding up until you use it at the gas pumps. So today I went to the store, I spend just over $100, so I received $.40 cent off each gallon of gas. Now, I also purchased 6 Oscar Meyer products in this one transaction and received another $.20 off each gallon of gas. I am underlining the word each just so you're aware if you go to the pumps, scan your rewards card and it will show how much off you have per gallon. You can choose to use the amount off, or save it. Lots of times we'll save it and go back to fill up my SUV which can hold 25 gallons, and then we take gas cans to fill it up to 30 gallons because 30 gallons is the maximum you can get. I can't tell you how many times I have filled up my SUV, plus the gas cans for FREE. That can be over $80 in savings a time.

For every 10 gallons of gas you pump at Giant Eagle gas stations, you receive a 1% "foodperk" credit. So with 25 gallons of gas you would receive 2% foodperk, but that extra 5 gallons would stay as a per gallon amount on your rewards cards. So if you went another day and used 5 more gallons of gas, you will then earn 1% in foodperks. Now you can use your foodperks any time when you shop, but we feel its best when we're ready to do a huge run and buy lots of meat products and non-food essentials, paper products, detergent, personal care, etc. If we save enough percentages, we can use a maxium of 20% at one time on a maximum $300 order. Any extra will carry over. So we'll spend around $300 and receive $60 off with our foodperks.

According to our receipt, which is a running 12 month total, we have saved over $3,300 in rewards which includes:
fuelperks savings $1,310.82
foodperks savings 367.19
weekly specials 1,268.66
coupons 405.48

And I can honestly tell you half of that coupon savings has occurred just in these last few weeks when I really started watching weekly specials and somewhat extreme couponing.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

how many hours do you spend couponing

When I watch TLC's Extreme Couponing, I can't help but think some of these people are a little crazy spending 30+ hours collecting, cutting, sorting, etc. all of their coupons. I guess that's a bit obsesssive in my opinion. Last week, between cutting, sorting, pulling coupons, comparing sale items, etc., I probably spent a total of 4-5 hours. And probably a good hour of that time is me inputting sales into an excel spreadsheet. Hopefully, once I figure out the sale rotations, I'll have a good working sales summary to look at to see what is possibly coming up for sale so I might save coupons to use for another time. How many hours do you spend?

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Walgreens ~ $4.00 trip

My first coupon trip to Walgreens. Needless to say, I've never taken advantage of the coupons which print out after a purchase. So today was my day. What's the best? My cashier used my 5 register rewards and did two separate transactions for me, so I got my immediate savings .... and I didn't even ask her to do that, she offered. Here's my tally:

Gillette Fusion Razor $9.98
Coupon P/G $4.00
Reg. Rewards $5.00
Paid $.98

Carefree Panty Liners $.99
3 coupons for $1.00 off each
Paid: FREE

Nexcare Bandaids $2.99
Mail-in rebate x 2
Paid: FREE after mail-in rebate

Arm & Hammer BOGO $6.99
2 coupons for $1:00 off each
Paid: 4.99 for 2

Saturday, May 7, 2011

eoffers at Giant Eagle

So I've heard about loading coupons onto your store courtesy card, but never taken the time to figure it out. Wow, what a difference. I logged onto my Giant Eagle account, clicked eoffers and started loading ecoupons to my card. A store coupon, coupled with a manufacturer's coupon, is twice the savings. Giant Eagle always doubles manufacturer's coupons up to $1, so really it's like saving three times as much. Take the time to look on-line at your store's website to see if they offer eoffers or ecoupons to load to your card. This is an example:
Pillsbury cookies:
eoffer $1.00 off 2 packages
manu. coupon $1.00 off 2 packages
on sale for 2/$5 this week
stack the two coupons for a 2/$3 final price

Friday, May 6, 2011

birthday freebies

here's a great link to signing up for all those great FREE deals on your birthday.
click here and sign-up for what you like.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

patience

I can see how patience can really pay off. I've been tracking my grocery store for 4 weeks now. I'm keeping track of items I purchase and their sales prices. I can see how waiting for the rock bottom price can really pay off. One week an item might be only $.25 off and two weeks later, it is $1.25 off. I have been keeping my inserts for each week, but I am keeping the spreadsheet on my computer. This will allow me to see when an item is at its rock bottom price. It's hard having all these great coupons and not wanting to use them right away. This is where extreme couponers have learned the most I imagine. Wait, wait, wait for the rock bottom price before buying in bulk.

Here's my tally



So, I've been to the grocery store twice [Giant Eagle]. This is the store I usually will shop as their perks are just too great [I'll explain in another post].

Total $245.45. With in-store specials [$78.75], plus my coupons [$34.70], my bill came down to $132.33. Most of the items purchased on this trip were in-store specials for which I then had a coupon or two. Some items purchased were staples, lunch meat for sandwiches, meat for dinner, bread and fresh fruit/veggies. This purchase is the photo above.

Total $477. With in-store specials [$62.02], plus my coupons [$40.32], plus we turned in our foodperks [20%], with a combined savings of $162.34, my bill was $266.58. Again, I will explain GE fuelperks and foodperks program in another post.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Sunday paper inserts

2 Smartsource inserts
1 redplum insert
1 P&G insert
1 Target insert
1 Moments to Save insert [fritos-lays, quaker and pepsi-co [gatorade, green tea, sobe] products] $20 worth

off to buy 5 more papers