Monday, May 12, 2008

Grocery Savings - Part II

Since my weekend regular schedule got thrown off with our Mother's Day activities I left work an hour early so hubby and I could head to the grocery store. Although he generally ends up adding at least $50 to the bill, I think I managed to hold down the costs this time. ha!

Fred Meyer has their pretty awesome rewards program - every dollar earns a point and at the end of the quarter they send coupons for cash off. No minimum or restrictions. I earned $15 in coupons last quarter. It's amazing how much two people can spend on groceries (especially when buying organic).

So right off the bat I have $15 off. I also got coupons for $2 off the meat department and $2 off produce. I got my apples pretty much for free this week. Three pounds of my favorite Fuji apples for $0.63!!!! They were on sale for $0.88 a pound and then I had my coupon. SO awesome! We saved $3.86.

The Kashi cereal that we eat was 40% off. That is huge because it is regularly $4.49 a box and hubby can seriously eat 2 boxes a week. I bought 5 boxes - 3 of his and 2 of mine. I just felt weird buying any more than that even though they are good until 2009 so stocking up with more would probably have been good. With the 5 that I bought we saved $8.40.

The sales this week at Fred Meyer are INSANE. Besides Kashi, they also had buy one get one free on whole chickens and they were only $1.59 a pound. So I saved $7.38 - two full chickens for around $8. Woohoo! We put them in the freezer and will probably smoke one of them.

Yogurt was also on sale. We bought 10 for $5 and I had a coupon for $0.50 off. So I saved $3.20.

Raw almonds were on sale big time. I have encorporated almonds into my daily diet and absolutely love them. They're expensive though - even in bulk. Regularly around $7 a pound and they were on sale for $3.99. And guess what? They were COMPLETELY out. Not a single almond left. So I got a rain check because I really didn't feel like going back later this week. I don't usually ask for rain checks. :)

They also had a coupon for $.99 butter! That is a savings of $3 each (limit of four so a potential savings of $12!!!). There was only one box left so I grabbed it and asked for a rain check for the other three. For this trip I saved $3.

I may have mentioned that I am totally addicted to Soda. Thankfully I've switched to diet but it's insanely expensive and has jumped up in price a ton in the last year. Fred Meyer's regular price is $8.29 for a twelve pack!

They were on sale this week 4/$12 plus there was a coupon for $3 off. I saved $24.16 on four 12 packs!!!!!

Since I've gotten it in my head that I can cook (I'm sure I'll get over this) I decided that I needed a couple more mixing bowls. I really don't have that many. One or two and they used to be my great grandmothers. FM had buy two get one free on Pyrex bowls so I got a cute little set of custard bowls (I like these for mixing frosting in colors and other smaller mixing needs) and two 2.5 quarter bowls and saved $5.99.

Fresh sockeye salmon was on sale from $9.99 to $5.99 so I got a nearly two pound fillet, with my $2 coupon, for $9.50 for a total savings of $9.68.

I also decided last week to switch from pre-made juice in a carton to frozen juice and make it myself at home. I got 5 frozen cans of 100% juice for $5 - saving $2.15.

Phew!

So, with all the other small sale items and coupons, for this week's trip we saved...Holy Cow! $82.82!!! WOW! That's more than twice what I saved last week.

Granted, it was still an expensive trip. It was around $132 for everything. And I'd add $25 at least for hubby. He's always throwing things in the cart that I'd never buy - like beer. ha!

So I didn't feel so guilty buying Mexican food. I even had a coupon for that!!! I know. I'm obsessed.

3 comments:

jennsquared said...

Isn't it awesome to be able to do save money like that? I love coupons!

Bethany said...

Sounds like you're doing well with grocery savings! I'm sure you can cook, anyone can, so don't try to get over that! Those pyrex custard cups are great for making individual pies (fruit or chicken pot pies) and freezing. They make a quick lunch that way and can go from the freezer to the fridge to the oven.

Also, I don't know if you've seen www.moneysavingmom.com before, but you might want to check it out. She gives lots of heads up on free samples and good deals with coupons, and you can learn to do the CVS deals. That's lots of fun and you can stop paying for toilet paper, deoderant, toothpaste, makeup, detergent, medicines... it's cool.

Anonymous said...

Wow, I'm impressed by how much money you saved. You make me want to get on top of what I'm spending and follow a food budget again. Nice work.