CVS and Weis Shopping Trip (7/14)

Today my step-mom went grocery shopping with me! I wanted her to go along to help me pick out meat. Usually my fiancé is with me so he kind of knows what the good deals are for meat but I have no idea when it comes to that. So I needed her to help me figure out if I was getting the most out of my money.

First up we went to CVS. I don’t have any pictures from this shopping trip because when we got it all back to my house I just put it away right away. At CVS I bought: 6 boxes of cereal, 2 bags of Chex mix, a 12 pack of toilet paper, 3 dish liquid soaps, and 8 cans of tuna. I noticed at the register a “Green bag tag”.

 

You get a $1 Extra Buck every 4th time you use it. Just attach it to any reusable bag and make sure when you shop at CVS that you have that bag with you. I didn’t have any of those bags, so I figured I would just look at Weis and see if I could pick some up there. I figured that my fiancé and I would benefit from this because of how often we’ve been going to CVS and it’s good to start using the reusable bags.

Total spent: $27.85
Total saved: $35.69

So at CVS, I did pretty good. Without the savings, I would have spent $63.54. So yeah, I’d say I did a little more than pretty good.

Next up was Weis. Now I knew this bill was probably going to be a little bit expensive because we need meat. But that will last us a while, so it’s only an “every now and then” purchase. I bought: a pack of 4 bagels, milk, eggs, yogurt, 5 boxes of pasta, 6 boxes of tissues, 2 packs of tortillas, 3 packs of pudding, and of course, some meat.

Total spent: $72.03
Total saved: $17.91

So overall, I did good. I spent $99.88 altogether. And you know what? Next week we are definitely skipping the grocery store unless I can get really, really, really good deals. We could survive without going to the grocery store for a little while now. Well, we would need the main staples: eggs, milk, and bread. But other than those 3 things, we have a ton of food in the house! Thanks for reading!!!

My CVS and Weis trip!!

I just have to say that extreme couponing is awesome!!!! We were on our way home from the store last night and I felt so proud of myself for the savings that we got!!! We decided to skip Giant because it’s a little farther away than CVS and Weis and I didn’t really have a big list for there. So first up we went to CVS. We got everything on my list except for 3 things. The coupon I had for Caress body wash expired a few days ago and I didn’t realize it. We were going to get the Schick hydro 5 since it was buy one get one free but then decided my fiancé didn’t need it and the coupon was only for a dollar off and didn’t really make it that cheap. And the Gain dish liquid for 97 cents was sold out. We are going to start going shopping on Monday night’s instead of Friday so that the items we want don’t run out. I said before going that the cost was going to be around $14. So let’s see how I did.

Here is what we got:

4 boxes of cereal, 3 boxes of poptarts, and 1 tube of toothpaste

The total without coupons would have been: $29.86

We saved: $14.37

Our total with coupons was: $15.49

We also got $2.00 extra bucks for buying the toothpaste. So already we have $2.00 off our next purchase!!

The best deal we got at CVS was definitely the cereal!! It was $6 for 4 boxes!!

When we left CVS I was very proud of my savings. But like I told my fiance, that was just a warm-up. We were going to save a lot more at Weis!!!

So at Weis we got everything on our list, and then some. But I still think we got a great deal!!! I estimated that the cost would be around $40, but I knew it was going to be more since we got a few extra things.

We got:

3 jars of Ragu pasta, 2 packages of Perdue chicken nuggets, 10 yogurts, 10 gatorade, 1 package of baby carrots, 2 packages of hot dogs, 6 hamburger helpers, 4 suddenly salads, 4 boxes of pizza rolls, 1 box of cake mix, 1 box of frosting, a sandwich container, 1 bag of bagels

We saved: $30.39 (only $8.94 of that was from coupons, the rest was from the store card)

Our total without coupons and savings: $97.22

We saved: $39.33

Our total with savings: $57.89

We also got a store coupon or $5.00 off our next shopping trip!!

I think the best deal we got at Weis was the 6 boxes of Hamburger Helper for only $4!!!

So overall, I think our first shopping trip using coupons went very well!! I can’t wait to get tomorrow’s Sunday paper (2 of them actually) and get more coupons!!! Then I’m gonna look through the ads and plan my next trip. I don’t know if we will go every week though. Maybe only if we need stuff or if we can get stuff for really cheap. Does anyone else coupon? If so, I want to know how often you go grocery shopping. Thanks for reading and be sure to stay tuned for more of my shopping adventures!! Have a great Saturday night everyone!! I’m off to see Cars 2!!

Weekend Recap

Another weekend has come to an end. Here is what I did this weekend:

Friday night my fiancé and I went to Rita’s for the first time this year. I was going to get the new pear flavor, but then just decided to get my usual: Swedish Fish!! The gelati’s are the best!!!! What really sucks is that I have some coupons for Rita’s, but they can’t be used at the one closest to us.

Saturday I made grilled cheese and tomato soup for supper. We didn’t have any milk so I had to make the tomato soup with water and it didn’t turn out as well as it does with milk. I should have just gone to the store real quick to get some milk. Now I know for next time: never make tomato soup with water! I was doing fine with my grilled cheese but then I got impatient and turned the heat up a little bit. I shouldn’t have done that because then I burnt my grilled cheese. Oh well, out of the 4 pieces I made, only 2 of them were burnt. Then after dinner we walked down to my dad and step-mom’s and then went to down to my aunt’s house for game night.

Then today I worked from 8-4. It was alright, slow at times but we had a few little rushes. Then after work I came home and I organized my coupons. Before, I just had my coupons in this:

And they weren’t organized at all. So I decided that I wanted to organize my coupons into categories. My fiancé was talking to someone at his work that coupons and she told him about the site The Krazy Coupon Lady. I remember seeing the lady that runs the site on the TLC show, Extreme Couponing. So I went onto the site, and found a list of different sections for coupons that she puts her coupons in. Here is what my coupons look like now:

A few of my coupon sections:

They are just paper-clipped together with a piece of paper saying what the category is. I’m going so start out by just keeping them clipped together and in my blue folder for now. When I really get into couponing (and this method drives me crazy) then I’ll get a binder and put my coupons in that.

Then my fiancé and I went down to my dad and step-mom’s house for dinner. We had chicken that was coated in bread crumbs and spices. It was really good!!! For dessert was cake with homemade chocolate peanut butter icing!

After that, we needed to get milk and bread. We went to the Dollar Tree first and decided to buy 2 papers so we could get more coupons!! On the way home, I started looking at the ads and I was so excited looking through the ads and going “I have a coupon for that! And that!!And that!!” So now I’m going to clip my coupons, look through the ads, and plan my next grocery trip! Oh, and I’m going to do that while watching the 19 Kids and Counting: First Grandson special on TLC and The Glee Project on Oxygen! I hope everyone had a great weekend! Don’t forget to enter my two giveaways. One of them ends this Wednesday! Have a great evening!!!

How do they do it??

So, recently I’ve been watching some reruns of Extreme Couponing, and I would like to know…how do they do it?? I mean, I know that they buy like, 5 Sunday papers and dumpster dive to get coupons and they use coupons for items that are on sale to increase the savings, but how do they find stores that allow you to use more than one coupon per item??? I’ve been looking at all of the coupon policies for the stores around me and all of them say “One coupon per item”. I just don’t think it’s fair that all stores don’t have this policy because I think they definitely should.

One of the episodes I saw last night was about a guy that had 1,000 tubes of toothpaste. Seriously!?!? Will he even use that many tubes of toothpaste in his lifetime? I understand that he got it all for free but it’s pointless to have that many when you won’t ever use that one. And there was another guy (or maybe it was the same one) that had enough body wash to last him 21,000 showers. I did the math and if he takes one shower per day, it would last him a little over 5 and a half years!!! That is a little more realistic than having 1,000 tubes of toothpaste, because at least you know that you’re going to need body wash for 5 and a half years. Then there were a set of twins who were getting all this free stuff on their birthday. I try to do the same thing. Last year I got a coupon for a free bear at Build-a-Bear Workshop so I used it. Anyway, what bugged me about the twins was that one of them had a huge stockpile of diapers and she didn’t have any kids. She got them all for free, but that’s besides the point. Would you buy dog food if you didn’t have a dog? Probably not. I just don’t see what she needs a ton of diapers for if she doesn’t have any kids. Sure she’ll have them for the future if she has any kids, but I still think it’s pointless.

I  enjoy watching the show because it’s really cool to see their total go from a couple hundred bucks down to nothing. I just don’t think that what they are doing is really fair or necessary. It’s not fair because they wipe out entire shelves of items. Also as I mentioned before, not all stores allow you to stack coupons, so unless they all do it, I don’t think that any should. It’s not necessary because as also mentioned before, what do you need 1,000 tubes of toothpaste for?? Couponing can be done without buying the whole store out. If that’s what you’re going to do, why don’t you just buy the store?

Alright, I’m done ranting now. I just wanted to write about what I thought about Extreme Couponing since it’s a big topic right now. Leave me your comments and let me know what you think. Also, it’s the start of week 4 of my blog hop, so check that out. Last week was pretty sad, I only had 8 other people besides me and the “Featured Blog of the Week” that joined it. And the most I had link up 27 in week 2, so let’s see if we can beat that this week!!!