Do You Shop Walmart?

I love Walmart. I really do. But I hate that they don't double coupons. However, with their price matching policy [which I've never done] and low prices, sometimes it works out well with high value coupons. I will still shop my local Giant Eagle because they always double coupons but I just wait until the an item goes rock bottom before I purchase it with my coupon and usually end up with a better deal than at Walmart.

There are a few coupon blogs I read. When I am heading to Walmart, I will read I Heart The Mart website. Paul has a great handle on the entire Walmart experience. He points out items I would have never even checked. Paul has saved me money. Going to Walmart, check out his websit

To Buy or Not Buy at Sam's Club

We used to belong to Sam's Club years ago, but haven't renewed our membership for a while now. We just would use it for a purchase of outdoor furniture, a trampoline, a grill, video games, etc. we really didn't use it for food, although i would always pick up some food items while there. Before i began really, really couponing, I didn't realize shopping for non-perishable food at big box stores wasn't really a deal.  I can't tell you how many big boxes of cereal I purchased that I "thought" was a deal, only to see when my local Giant Eagle has a great sale on cereal, plus the coupons I have, it makes the cereal only $1.00 or $1.50 per box.

Here is a list of things NOT to buy from big box stores:

• Soda and Chips [wait for great sales at your local store]
• Produce [usually one thing will be priced great, the others are comparable to market]
• Candy and unhealthy snacks. I certainly don't want supersize of anything around the house.
• Mayo and other condiments, unless they are packaged in smaller bottles
• Spices [unless you use spices all the time, shelf life for spices is only 6-9 months]
• Toothbrushes and toothpaste. I cannot remember the last time I paid money for toothbrushes and toothpaste. I get them free, on sale, with coupons. I have a huge stockpile. 
• Razors and Shaving Cream. Again, another staple we could go for. A refill for men's razors was like $50 for 15 cartridges. I won't pay more than $2.00 for a new razor that already has two blades in it. My husband [and now son] have a couple razors in our stockpile with one blade attached, plus two more for later. And with coupons I practically get these for $2.00, along with additional cartridges. Shaving cream is usually get for $.50 per bottle. 
• Hair color. Personally my hair color runs $8.99 everywhere. I frequently get $4/2 coupons. When it goes on sale, I buy. This week, for instance, it was on sale 2/$12, which made my hair color, with coupon, $4 each. That's quite a savings, let alone the savings of me doing my own hair. If you're a brunette, go with Ash in the color name, ten it won't turn red on you. 

Giant Eagle bonus fuelperks Cereal Sale

Beginning tomorrow, July 1, Giant Eagle begins their 4th annual bonus fuel perks cereal sale. You should always take advantage of this sale. It's a good one. Especially during the summer when my kids seem to go through cereal like crazy.
Now this is good for two reasons. If you picked up any newspapers last weekend, there were some good coupons for Kelloggs [SS 7/8] and also I have some General Mills coupons from a while ago which expire on Saturday.
But even if you don't have any coupons, this is still a great sale because of the fuelperks you earn. The sale includes over 40 varieties, some are 4/$10 and some are 4/$12, but for every 4 cereals you buy, you'll earn $.20 in fuelperks. Now I just filled up my big Yukon yesterday and it was $91. So you betcha I'll be in Giant Eagle taking advantage of those fuelperks.

Market Tally & Why Shopping at Giant Eagle Rocks

I haven't posted a tally for quite a long time so here is the end of April's tally.
This is a running 12 month tally. So when I get to June, when I first began keeping track of tallies, I'll be able to better figure out my true yearly savings.

From Fuelperks:           $1743.87 [this is free fuel we have received]
From Foodperks:             388.44  [this is extra money off our total from buying fuel]
Weekly Specials:            2095.92  [these are in-store specials]
Coupon Savings:            1121.17  [that's free money people]

So I have saved, just in coupons, more than $1,100 for the last 12 months. Keep in mind, all I had to do was clip, organize and save.  I try to buy extras on weekly specials.  When we buy food at Giant Eagle, we earn $.10 for every $50 spent. If a trip costs us $150 then we just earned $.30 off each gallon of gas up to 30 gallons.  It is not hard for us to reach the cost of gas every 6 weeks. We will up one of our cars, take several gasoline containers and get our entire 30 gallons free. $1700 on fuel is quite a savings.

So then when you fill up, for every 10 gallons at Giant Eagle you earn 1% of foodperks. So for 30 gallons of gas, we earn 3% off of our grocery bill. We usually what until we reach 20% and then buy $300 worth of groceries and use our 20% off our food bill to get $60 off.  So this really adds up fast. My husband fills up every week and I usually am every week or week and a half, depending on where we have to drive for the weekend. We have to fill up at a GetGo which is Giant Eagle's gas station. Basically we got 6 free 30 gallon fill ups in the last 12 months.

Market Tally ~ Giant Eagle

September:

From fuelperks: $1328

From foodperks: 364

weekly specials: 1649

coupons 903

total 12 month savings:

$4,245.71

Check your Sunday papers

We get a paper delivered to our home on Sunday. I always wake up and check the coupons. I then determine whether I should go buy more papers at the market or just forget it. Some weeks there are no inserts, so I'm not doing this every weekend.

When you purchase papers at the market, check your inserts before you leave the store. Many times I have found our city newspaper purchased at the market does not contain everything. Or some inserts are duplicated, other are missing. I bought 5 more papers today because there were four inserts, at least that's what came to our home. At the store I went through at least 10 papers to find the ones which contained all inserts. I got lucky a couple times and some things were duplicated. On two papers, two inserts were missing. It will only take you one time of buying extra papers and getting home to realize that you didn't get everything you thought you were getting.

Why? Well, the newspapers are only given a certain amount of inserts each week. The subscriptions are the first ones to get all the inserts. And then the store copies get the remainder of the inserts. Once certain inserts are gone, they're gone. These are inserted by a machine so easily a mistake can be made.

So double check those papers from the market. You might even get lucky and find a couple newspapers with extra inserts like I did today.

Market Tally - Giant Eagle

12 month savings:

Weekly Specials $1580.67

Coupons 845.74

I have been saving approx. 40% on my food bills by using weekly specials combined with coupons. I hope to get that up to 50% - 60%.

Monthly Market Tally

Giant Eagle Tally:

12 month running totals

Fuelperks $1341.72

Foodperks 336.11

Weeklys 1481.21

Coupons 713.45

Couponmom.com

So, just today, I discovered the Couponmom.com website. WOW, I could have used this a couple months ago. So go check it out. You can look at the deals in your state and grocery store. So I'm in Ohio and shop at Giant Eagle. I think you can figure it out, but you click on the tab "grocery deals by state" and then put in your state and preferred grocery store and up pops all of the weekly sale items, along with what coupon matches that sale item. It shows the date of the coupon ran and from what publication, the dollar amount of the coupon. There are several different ways to sort the table, I choose to sort by highest percentile saved, highest to lowest.

Couponmom.com has a couple videos which completely explains everything in a super,duper way.

.... and it's FREE

and this is why you always ALWAYS carry your coupon binder

I don't use Veet, I'm an old razor and shaving cream type of gal, but hey, when it's discounted to $3 and I have a $2 coupon, you betcha I'm going to try it. Stumbled upon this deal in the discounted section of Giant Eagle. If I didn't have my binder with me, I would have lost out on this deal because it was the last one.

Kroger Deals & Disappointments

So normally I don't shop at Kroger. Giant Eagle FuelPerks and FoodPerk are just too good to pass up. But I went today, mainly because of a few great deals. But I also learned a lesson.

Deals:

Pineapples 10/$10, these are normally $2.99, my kids love them.

Quilted Northern bath tissue 12 double rolls $5.99, with two e-coupons at $2.00 off each. I had to do these in two separate transactions because customer service said it wouldn't work as one transaction. So toilet paper was $3.99 each.

Dial Soap - 2 packs 10/$10

Gatorade is 10/$10 plus 5 free.

Take 5 gum: BOGO

They had pork chops and roasts at BOGO.

Disappointment:

Gillette Mens Body Wash $3.49 on sale for $2.49 and a $2 e-coupon. I also had a manu. coupon for $2 thinking I would get an overage. Well, evidently Kroger does not allow stacking of coupons. But still $.49 for body wash was a great price, so I kept it.

I learned it pays to check coupon policy. I noticed Kroger's e-coupons are more than Giant Eagle and I was able to load two same type coupons on my card at one time, but like noted above, I had to do two separate transaction. That, coupled with the fact they don't stack, I don't like. I'll keep my shopping at Giant Eagle unless there are rock bottoms deals at Kroger.

All You Magazine ~ free samples

I really love the All You magazine. I did get the subscription for a year, but then realized if I picked it up at Walmart [$1.88] you actually get a ton of coupons. The subscriptions to my house did not contain all the coupons as the magazine sold in the store. Come to find out the Walmart has a special relationship with All You and they agreed to sell the magazine only if there were coupons!

Also, another benefit. You can sign up for daily free samples of items. Go here to sign up and every day check your email for the daily special. Sign up for the ones you like and just sit back and wait for the mail.

Monthly Market Tally

Total 12 month savings:

from fuelperks: $1430.82

from foodperks: $ 367.19

weekly specials: $1485.30

coupons: $ 553.10

just in coupons alone, I have saved over $145 last month alone.

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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.