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.