January Spending

I was hoping to do a weekly tally of spending & saving but alas, life got in the way! We'll shoot for a monthly tab though I may very well switch back to weekly totaling with a month's summary each month.

One of my New Year's resolutions was to record our grocery & household item spending just to see how (hopefully) well we were doing. We had made a budget late last year and I guesstimated that we spend about $300-$400 per month on grocery & household items.

Tracking our spending closely this month, I was on target but too close to the $400 mark for my taste. I'd like to think we'll do better in February but my hopes aren't too high as our meat supply is getting low and will need replenishing sometime this month.

Thanks to Super Doubles and Mega events this month, we have a very well stocked supply of lunchtime snacks and drinks, as well as convenience lunches for Jon & I when needed & various other odds n ends. Here's the rundown...

Spent $399.23
Saved $1797.26
82% Savings!

Our grocery store spends were typically in the 90% savings range. The inclusion of Target really impacted the overall percentage- we spent about $92 there this month with an overall savings of 12%. This included diapers and my protein shakes which add up rather quickly.

I'm also keeping track of my rebate savings. I love me some No Beer Purchased Require rebates and they really do add up!

We've received $80.96 in rebate checks this month for such rebates (along with the Baby Einstein refund program I blogged about in a previous month) and I submitted rebate forms for an additional $96 in various rebate programs that we're still waiting to receive. If you subtract them for our total spending, this would decrease the total spend to $222.27. Woohoo!

Dinner on the Cheap...

We've been snowed in here in Central Carolina but found it safe enough to make a trip to Kroger today. There's a great mega event going on now through this coming Saturday that makes multiple trips worthwhile- check out www.southernsavers.com for some great match-ups!

I'm fixing dinner right now for all 6 of us...

Baked chicken with wild rice & steamed asparagus

I used a $1 off produce winetag for some split chicken breast on sale @ Kroger today bringing total cost for 3 breasts down to $1.24

The wild rice is some Uncle Ben's we got for free AC during a previous Kroger mega event

The asparagus was on sale for $2.99/lb at Kroger this week also.

Total cost for a yummy chicken dinner: $4.23 - that's just 70 cents per person!

We went out to celebrate my husband's birthday at Rudino's earlier today with his folks. One of our girls ordered pasta for lunch and this meal itself cost $4.00! I joked that I probably could have bought 25 boxes of pasta for that price!

Free Keebler 100 Calorie Right Bites cookies @ Lowe's Foods

This deal has only 3 more days left and supplies may be limited at your store, but it was too good not to share. Use your Lowe's 3 week coupon to get each box for $1.49- this came in Lowe's fliers a few weeks back or you can ask cashier if they have one you can use on hand. Then use .75/1 manufacturer's insert coupon and voila- free cookies! I am always on the lookout for free or dirt cheap lunchbox snacks for our school-aged children. Stella loves the Pecan Sandies and chewy chocolate chippers too!

We've also continued to stock up on free G2's at Kroger. You should see our garage! I need to start taking and posting pics of our stockpile.

Speaking of Kroger, they have another mega event starting tomorrow - one of the deals is a small moneymaker after coupon. Quaker Quakes will be 49 cents each after the Mega promo $5.00 off when you buy 10- use .75/1 manufacturer's q's and make 25 cents each bag. I stocked up on these when they were free after coupon at Harris Teeter last week and they are yummy. My personal favorite is the Vanilla Creme Brulee flavor. Delish!

More Grocery Store Freebies!

I had a kid-free shopping experience earlier this morning and found some great finds to use with some new coupons from this morning's inserts...

Harris Teeter:

FREE Hershey's Extra Dark bars w/ $1/1 q from today's inserts
FREE Wolfgang Puck's Organic Soup w/ $1/1 q from today's inserts
FREE Mission Tortillas w/ .75/1 q from today's inserts

Kroger:

FREE Gatorade G2 bottles with .50/1 q from today's inserts

We go through sports drinks like crazy in our home so this was a welcome surprise! If you can find any of these q's on a coupon clipping site, grab them quick! They are going fast.

Office Max Freebies!

If you're like me and do a lot of internet coupon printing and trading of q's, you'll love this deal! Office Max Reward Members will get back the money they spend on these items this week- you have to buy the exact items specified. They are:

Sharpie Fine Point Black Permanent Markers, 12 pk.
Ascend Recycled Peel-to-Seal No. 10 Envelopes, 50 ct
Boise X-9 Paper, 10 Ream Case

They are pictured on the front page of the Office Max ad this week. I love the Rewards program! The Rewards I earned last year helped me to get a Garmin Nuvi for DIRT CHEAP on Black Friday. It is a great program.

Day 3 - Super Doubles

I didn't have as great a third day as I thought I would but still did pretty well! I received an E-Vic Alert this morning indicating that Special K bars were .99 each- which would make the Special K deal a potential $5 moneymaker when you buy 4. E-VICs typically indicate a limit (usually one!) but since the E-VIC alert did not say "limit 1," I hoped it would work on all 4 during a transaction. Unfortunately, it was a no go and only 1 of the 4 bars I picked up this morning totaled .99- the rest were the normal $2 each. Oh well!

Here's what I got:

4 boxes of Special K bars (pickings were slim this morning so I was left w/ Vanilla flavor)
3 boxes of Kahiki Chicken Tempura
3 boxes of Gorton's Popcorn Shrimp
1 box of Bagel Bites, 9 ct.
2 pouches of Bumblebee Salmon (used two $1/1 seafood WTs)
1 box of Bayer Children's Aspirin
1 Campbell's V8 Sweet Red Bell Pepper Soup
1 jar of Nutella Spread

Total spent: $3.25
Total saved: $52.17 or 94%

Day 2 of Super Doubles - NOTHING out of pocket!

Sometimes things work out strangely well at HT and today was one of those days where the stars (and the register) aligned in just the right way to allow for me to spend absolute no money whatsoever on this haul (yes, you read that way...no $$ at all- not even a penny!):

1 box of Kahiki Egg Rolls
1 small pack of Chinet Napkins
12 boxes of Special K bars
8 Oikos single serve greek yogurts
2 boxes of Kahiki Chicken Tempura
1 small box of Wholly Guacamole

I split my order into three separate transactions - each one showed an overage of .33 but the cashier zeroed it out and I walked out of the store with about $72 worth of stuff without paying a cent. It's not every day you wind up with 100% savings at a grocery store!

I mistakenly thought the Kahiki products were $1 AC- therefore enough to eat up the overage from the Special K deal and leave me with just paying tax.

This is NOT a typical situation at HT- I've had an actual overage happen only once before at another HT and was told I'd need to pick something else out in the store to make up for it. So this is a YMMV.

Super Doubles Brag - Day 1

I did my first Super Doubles trip this week braving the cold in the wee small hours of the morning. Here's what I got:

3 boxes of Campbell's V8 Sweet Red Pepper Soup (this stuff is super yummy!)
3 boxes of Finish Electrasol Tabs
2 boxes of Special K Original Cereal
10 boxes of Special K cereal bars
3 Marie Callendar's Homestyle Creations Meals
2 bars of Toblerone dark chocolate
2 boxes of OreIda Easy Fries
1 Endust Free furniture polish
1 Dawn Direct Foaming Detergent
3 Oikos Single Serve Greek Yogurts

Total before coupons & VIC savings: $102.22
Total after coupons & VIC savings: $5.49
Savings of $96.73 or nearly 95% savings

I split this up into three separate transactions to maximize savings thanks to the Special K promotion. In this promo, you get $5 off your order when you buy 4 Special K products. I used a total of 20 coupons that doubled per Harris Teeter's rules and 3 coupons that did not double (the Electrasol $2.50/1).

Have you stopped by HT yet? How did you fare?

Super Doubles @ HT starting tomorrow...

It's been a loooooooong time since a special couponing event has happened at HT and finally one will be rolling our way again beginning tomorrow. Super Doubles Week kicks the New Year off with a bang- and the big stash of q's in this past week's inserts provide a welcome boost to the potential freebies to be had. You should see how skinny my binder became at the end of 2009 thanks to all the expired coupons- it looked positively pitiful!

Jenny at Southern Savers has an excellent match-up list posted already - click here for all the delightful match-ups.

My personal faves are the Special K bars and Oikos greek yogurts. I plan on breaking up my visits into several small transactions to take the most advantage of the Special K deal (get $5 off your order when you purchase 4 Special K items in your transaction- with the $1/2 q that came out in this past week's insert, that makes for $1 moneymaker). I picked up 22 copies of the Sunday paper this weekend- all for a little under $6 thanks to saved up Register Rewards and Walgreen's low price on the paper.