Category Archives: Coupons

Groceries- Year End Update

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Over the final few days of 2012, I am going to review each of the goals that I set this year  as well as update and establish new goals for 2013. I am excited to be able to see in black and white some of the huge steps and reaching of goals that we have been able to achieve.

Grocery Budget is set at $800 per month, this includes diapers, cleaning supplies, food and toiletries.

First I want to report on December, currently we are sitting right at the $800 mark for the month. This includes items for Lily’s birthday, a dinner for 20 people last Sunday, newspaper subscription for the year and a purchase of chicken tenders from Zaycon foods. The local store Food Lion, has this awesome coupon out for $5 off $5. The limit is set at one per day. So we have been using it every day since I discovered on Thursday. I am not sure how long they will continue to allow its use, I am sure the expiration date is a misprint of 12/29/13. So I am plan to stop by each time we pass a store, which is at least once day. I have printed enough coupons for Matt and I both to use on a daily basis. So far we are having fun buying some items that we normal would not splurge on as tight as the grocery budget it. Checking the stockpile, we could honest eat from our fridge and freezer for a month with purchasing only diary, bread and meat. However I know this will not be happening in January as I have already heard that both Food Lion will run a special promotion the first 2 weeks of January as well as my favorite store to shop Harris Teeter.    GOAL MET FOR DECEMBER!

For the year we have spent $8617 or approximately $715 a month on groceries. This is a significant drop from last year where we spent $9900 or $825  a month. Some of the changes this year include Zaycon Foods, more careful couponing on my part, Amanda living on her own and the fact that we are no longer buying diapers!!!!!  GOAL MET for 2012!!

So what is next?  My goal for 2013 is to spend $600 a month on groceries. I am going to be using the envelope system as well, which will increase the accuracy of all the totals.   I don’t think this will be an easy goal. As I have mentioned earlier my stockpile is really full at this point so I am only buying items at stock up prices except for meat, and with the coupons that Food Lion is currently releasing I am positive that at least for January this goal will be met!

Grocery Goal for 2013 $600 a month this includes cleaning supplies, food and toiletries.   This will also include supplies for our square foot garden and the purchase of any coupons.

CVS Candy Trip

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25 cents a bag is definitely a stock up price around here!

I have not done any coupon shopping since our trip to Michigan. One fo the reasons, is that I have been sick for the past week or so. As I was looking at Southern Savers last  night, I remembered that I had around 20 ECB from the Black Friday event that would expire soon. So I gathered my bags and headed to CVS this morning. I am so glad I did. I was able to grab 8 bags of candy for $2.00, that is $0.25 a bag!!!! The other way to look at it is that I spent $2, saved $34 or 94%.   I definitely don’t need any more candy before Christmas now!

Shopping- 11/05/2012

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I was super excited to learn that Harris Teeter was running a coupon event this week. The news got even better when I learned that due to my location, the stores to the North were having Super Doubles and the store to my south was having Triples. The choice was going to be difficult until I learned that Triples included coupons up to $1!! To the south and Salisbury it was. I have actually made two trips already, one on Thursday and one as a date on Saturday night. I have spent a total of $56, saved $160 or 74%. Saturday night was my single highest saving amount of $97. Matt was not impressed until I reminded him that $18 of my $33 spent was on Tide Laundry Detergent. I am brand loyal to Tide because it cleans the clothes which prolonges their lives. So this was definitely a stock up trip!  I also made a trip to CVS this week for deodorant, I really like Mitchum and Matt really likes the new Right Guard 5 so I was able to make both of us happy for $12!  I spent a total of $18 saved $35 but the best deal of all was the 2 rainchecks that I have now for Diet Coke 2 L at 0.88 each!!

Total spent this week is $74 or less than 1/5 of the budget!!

Grocery Budget/ Shopping Update 10/25/2012

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As the month of October comes crashing to an end, I am thinking toward debt reduction and our budget for the coming year. This year has seen some major financial changes for us, but my God is bigger than any of those!  I will share in more detail very soon the evidence of this! However in the mean time, I have been focusing on readjusting the budget. Our biggest spending area has always been the grocery budget. In reality, I have fed and providing our items for personal use for about $31 a person a week.  For the past 3 months, including this one I have been below budget. Looking back at the entire year to this point I am 50% for meeting budget and on average spend $756 a month. My thought is that with diapers and formula no longer being needed at all, I should be able to reduce this amount to $600 a month. Starting in November, I am going to use this as a stated goal. in addition to this goal, I know that I need to start using cash for grocery purchase. But in order to do this I have to be able to limit shopping for several weeks so maybe November will help in this area also. This month I have spent $725 including my shopping today.

We decided to head to Winston Salem today in order to use one of the gift cards I won at the Fall festival and combine it with an awesome,kids eat free coupon at Olive Garden. Combining both deals we (5) ate for $20 tip included, I also brought home enough left overs for Haley’s dinner and at least 2 lunches tomorrow!  I am really pleased with this deal and combined with the fact we order and ate a free pizza at lunch, no eating out should not be a problem this weekend.

I had read earlier that Harris Teeter was having a really good sale this week, so when I settled on the fact that we were heading to Winston, I decided to plan a coupon trip. To keep things real, I spent approximately 1. hour looking at the sales and pulling out coupons. I spent $31 and saved $63 or 67%!! Even better, I purchased eggs and milk that should last us for a couple of weeks. We will be leaving in 3.5 weeks for Michigian for a week. I would like to clean out some of the food from the freezers. Just in case the electricity goes out while we are away. I hope that will all the items we have been stockpiling, I will be able to avoid shopping  except for trip supplies until after our return.

Shopping

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This was a pay week for us which means that  most of the shopping gets done on or around Thursday,  I have been trying to reduce our grocery budget and have avoided going to Costco most of the month. In addition to keeping a list up this past week of items that we were running low on, I realized that  I was going to have to go to Walmart  as well. I really dislike Walmart. They are easily offended with my coupons and usually I can get better deals by driving out of town. However this week Walmart was not to be avoid as Amanda wanted makeup and picture frames for her birthday. So I spent about 45 distracted minutes planning a trip which not only included coupons but price matching as well. I am pleasantly surprised. I was able to save $40 or 25% on a trip of groceries. The cashier was very nice and did ask if I had an ad to price match to when I replied no, she started price matching.

Next on Friday night, we headed to Costco with our list that included cat food and dog food. After much debate, we added 25# of rice to the cart. We spent $332 which brings me to around $550 for the month. My plan is to stock up on Diet Cokes on sale at CVS this next week, but otherwise try to stay under $600 for the month!

Finally Saturday, Haley, Lily and I went back to Winston to find some need clothing items. My best deal was a shirt at JCPenny’s for $1.07, they sent me another $10 certificate this month for an unknown reason!  So I am finished shopping for a while (hopefully).

Grocery Store Challenge Final October

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What is my challenge? Spend as close to $20 a week at Food Lion over the next 3 weeks while purchasing items we need or to add to the stockpile based on sales. I am also going to give myself $10 a week to spend at CVS to keep rolling ECB. So that is a total of $30 a week for the next 4 weeks to feed our family of 6.

This is the third and final week of the challenge this time. One of the most exciting parts of the challenge was going out to our building tonight to  shop in the freezers. We will be picking up our 80# of chicken breast in 3 weeks and are really trying to make space for it. So tonight we pull out 2 weeks worth of meat items, I think* that this will leave enough space for the chicken now.

Now on to the shopping. I have not been really impressed with CVS lately and for the first two weeks of the challenge was simply using a gift card to purchase some items. So for this week, I had $30 to use at CVS. This week the were running a P&G promotion which included my only brand loyal item “Tide”, so of course I decided to stock up. I spent $21 and saved $38 or 65%.  Harris Teeter has a couple of awesome sales this week on cereal, so instead of Food Lion, I placed an order there. I also had to go to CVS because Matt and the kids have been sick all week and the medicine cabinet was empty. I ended up spending $35 between the two stores, saved $98 or 74%!  This week I have spent a total of $56 on grocery items so a fail again with the challenge!

I seriously doubt I will attempt another challenge for the rest of the year. We are currently planning a trip to Michigan in November as well as travel at least one weekend a month between quizzing and cheerleading. But I am hoping to continue to lower the amount we are spending on groceries so that by January, I can reduce our budget for groceries overall.

Grocery Store Challenge Sept (9/21/2012)

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What is my challenge? Spend as close to $20 a week at Food Lion over the next 3 weeks while purchasing items we need or to add to the stockpile based on sales. I am also going to give myself $10 a week to spend at CVS to keep rolling ECB. So that is a total of $30 a week for the next 4 weeks to feed our family of 6.

I spent about 20 minutes on Tuesday night, reviewing the Food Lion ad. I am finding that Food Lion is placing very different weekly ads in different markets so I definitely can’t base my shopping off Southern Savers right now.  I did make a huge change in my plan after getting to the store on Thursday for two reason. First, the price for 2 liter Diet Cokes were $1.99 instead of $1.79 I remember. I am going to recheck this price next week to see if it has actually risen that much. The second reason was a coupon that printed from the machine.$1 off 5 of chicken. So I quickly searched to find a ten pound bag of chicken quarter marked down to $5.23.  The picture shows just how much I was able to purchase. Total spent after coupons $19.94 SUCCESS!

 

Grocery Saving Part 2

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This has been one big shopping week at our house this week. We ended up with 3 trips to Harris Teeter during their Super Doubles event. We ended up spending $141, saving 57% or 190 in addition to $10 in gift cards remaining. The stock up items this week were mainly breakfast items which we use every day! So I was excited even after the trip that left us with the $10 in gift cards due to the POOR service we received.  I made a CVS free trip for 2 toothbrushes and 3 bottles of nail polish remover. Finally was the Food Lion trip, where I spent 20 and saved 23 or 53%.  In addition, the purchase of 80# of chicken breast is an added grocery expense this month. If you add up all that I have spent $675 on groceries already this month. So the first reason for doing a grocery challenge is that I need to keep the rest of the month spending as low as possible to stay in budget.  The next reason for the challenge is space related., in order to be able to freeze 80# of chicken breast in October, I need to clean out some space in the chest freezer. Finally, Food Lion has sent me 3 more $5 off $25 to use over the next several weeks. So I am again going to try this challenge

What is my challenge? Spend as close to $20 a week at Food Lion over the next 3 weeks while purchasing items we need or to add to the stockpile based on sales. I am also going to give myself $10 a week to spend at CVS to keep rolling ECB. So that is a total of $30 a week for the next 4 weeks to feed our family of 6.

I already have my shopping planned for tomorrow at Food Lion, hopefully with the iPhone I can get some pictures of what I am able to purchase!

Anyone joining me?

Groceries Savings Part 1

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If you follow much at all, you probably realize 2 things about groceries: 1. We tend to eat a lot! 2. I struggle each month to maintain a budget and groceries is probably the one area that I move and play with the most as well as the one area I overspend in as well.

One of the best/cheapest methods I have found is by buying in bulk. In March of this year, I learned about Zaycon Foods. I was able to purchase 80# of boneless skinless chicken breast for $1.99 a pound in March and $1.69 a pound this week. This is fresh chicken that has not been cut and needs some work before going into the freezer. The other downside to this purchase is that pick up is in a half hour slot and the closest “stops” to use are between 35 minutes and an hour. The good news is that in April (our last pick up) Matt took all three little kids with him,picked up the chicken came home and re-bagged all 80 in about 2 hours. We have been eating on that same 80# of chicken for 6 months now, at least once a week, sometimes sharing with friends or eating twice a week. When we pick up in October, the plan is to change only one thing. The size of the packages that we freeze, we have found that we can use 1 whole chicken breast for a meal for the 6 of us. We previously packaged 2 whole breast and end up with lots of left-overs.  I am not being compensated for writing about Zaycon foods but if you are interested and decided to order any of their products please either go directly through this link: http://www.zayconfoods.com/refer/zf71881  or simply fill in “Coffee Freak Designs” in the “Referred by” field. This will not cost you or penalize you at all however for each purchase you make, I will receive  a $1 credit for future use :)!

In the next post, I plan to tell you about my shopping deals this week as well as attempting the grocery challenge again and why?