Saturday, September 12, 2009

Weekly Grocery Trip

Alternate title: Lots of FREE Dog Food!

Welcome to another weekly breakdown of my grocery shopping trips!

My hope in sharing this each week is that you will be able to snag some of these same deals! I know that because of the sales cycles of most grocery stores, some of these deals may already be over by the time Saturday rolls around. But others are still going. I find out about most of these deals from Southern Savers and Money Saving Mom. What's not to love? They do most of the brain work for me. And for that, I am thankful!

I got all of this at Bi-Lo and Harris Teeter for $12.36! The only items that were not sale-priced were the flour and kidney beans.

Highlights of this trip:
--5- (1.5 lb.) bags of Chef Michael's dog food on sale for $3 each. Used 5-$3/1 coupons to get these for FREE!

--3 cans Mighty Dog. Used 3- FREE coupons.

--Pillsbury "canned' biscuits- Used recent $1/1 printables to get these for $.25 each.

--Cantaloupe- $.99 each

--Apples- $.79 a pound.

--2 boxes Reynold's foil- $.22 each

--Corn- $.20 ear

--Bag of bananas- $1.00

--Eggs- $.99 a dozen

--Mushrooms-marked down to $1.25

Later in the week I made a trip to Target to use my $5 gift card from last week and roll over another deal. Last week's trip went so smoothly that I was excited about this trip. However...

The cashier rang up all my purchases. When she saw my coupons, she wouldn't even start scanning them. She got all flustered and called for help. I think she was put off by the B1G1 dog food coupons on the top of the stack. So another cashier came over and started scanning them. All of the coupons went through fine except 5 of the store coupons. She explained that if they do not scan they cannot take them. Ok, that's fine. Then she said that I can only use one of the store coupons per item per transaction but that she would let it go this time. Again, I'm good with that. The store coupons do state, "one per transaction" and I will try to honor that from now on. (This is the first time I've had trouble with that.)

Then she went away(back to her own register) and cashier #1 took over again. I said I wanted to take 4 string cheese and 6 of the dog foods off my order because the coupons did not go through. She said she couldn't do that because of the coupons. So I was polite. I paid($5 more than I had planned) and left and then went to Customer Service to try to return those items. If I had it to do over again, I would've kept the cheese and just returned the dog food as she put stickers on the cheese, which I'm pretty sure means that they couldn't go back onto the shelf. I felt really badly about that! So she gave me the money back-more than I had spent for those items- because it doesn't take into account the manufacturers coupons that I used which the store will get reimbursed for.

I came home so confused and not sure what I really spent. I felt like I had somehow robbed the store and I hate feeling that way. I went over it all and I did not do anything wrong, but still... I think I'll take a break from Target for a couple of weeks.

After all that trouble, here's what I got:

--5 boxes Fiber One cereal at $2.50 each ( Buy 5 Fiber one products, get a $5 gift card.)Used 3 $.75/1, 1 $1/2 manu. coupons and stacked with 5 $1/1 store coupons:$4.25.

--8 string cheese at $.40 cents each- Used 4 $1/2 store coupons. (Register automatically only took $.80 cents off for each coupon):FREE.

--2 Chef Michael's canned foods- $.84 each. Used B1G1 manu. coupon stacked with B1G1 store coupons: FREE.

When it was all said and done, I guess I did not really pay anything out of pocket as I used my gift card from last week, plus I got another $5 gift card to use next time. So I did very well considering!


I also made my monthly pilgrimage to Sam's Club this week and stocked up on cheeses, sour cream, cottage cheese, some spices, tortilla chips and a big bag of white fish. I spent $60.12. With care, the cheese and sour cream should last us about a month and a half.

Breakdown of all purchases this week:
--Aldi(for sour cream)- $.90

--Dairy (for raw milk)- $6

--Walmart(for Blue Bunny frozen yogurt treat)-$3. 54 (Will send in for full rebate as part of a Labor Day weekend promotion.)

--Bi-Lo-$4.00

--Harris Teeter-$8.36

Weekly grocery total: $22.80

--Sam's Club-$60.12

Total spent this week: $82.92

Did you find any great deals this week? Please tell us about it!

**Thanks to Money Saving Mom for hosting Super Savings Saturdays and Southern Savers for hosting Friday Finals!

1 comment:

Ramble with Carole said...

You Did good!!! LOL! I saw your dog food Monday night! I went to Target last week for some stuff and was really disappointed. They had quite a few coupons that would not go through - several being the printed ones. So I don't know how quickly I will go there again.