Cake, anyone?

Safeway has a great deal on Betty Crocker products this week. For every two products you buy, you get three free. Essentially, this is a Buy 5 for $5 deal--and like with most creative advertising, you have to decipher the real price on your own. For example, Betty Crocker cookie pouches (yum...we love their Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies) are $2.49. Holy Expensive, Bat Man! But when you buy 2, that's only $4.98 and you get three more packages for free. Thus, the price should really read FIVE for $4.98. Now put coupons on all the products. Smart Source put out 40cent coupons for this product on March 28th. You can look around your favorite couponing websites to see if you could print that coupon for free or do what I do....go to ebay and do a buy it now search for the coupons and buy them in a bundle of 20. Theoretically, I would buy 20 (one for every coupon) it four groups of 5. Each transaction could cost $2.98 for 5 pouches. That's 59cents a pouch. Somewhat of a stellar deal.

The other fabulous deal at Safeway this week is the drink selections for $2.49. When you buy 5, you save $5--making them $1.49. The 10pk Capri Suns are included in this deal and there is a $1 off coupon per box available, making the boxes 49 cents. I bought 3 bundles of 20 last night on ebay. Guess who's stocking up on drinks for school lunches and summer picnics?

There's some weeks that you look at the ads and there seems to be only a couple of things that are truly tremendous. That's OK. If it's free, get a years' supply. If it's nearly free, still consider a 3 month supply. If you are keeping the grocery journal and watching cycles in the things you are buying, you'll notice if it's time to buy that 3 months' worth or not. I got such a stellar deal on Capri Suns back in August that I didn't have to buy juices for lunches for almost 7 months. And I have you know that I'm shelling out 16-20 homemade lunchs per week. So--it's stock time at our house to get me to the next nearly free sale (probably in August).

Albertsons' is running their ConAgra deal from a couple of weeks ago, again. When you buy $20 in Hunts' products, you get $5 OYNO. Coupons, coupons, coupons. That's what makes these kind of deals so cost-effective. Need spaghetti sauce, tomatoes, pudding? Now's the time to look at the prices and what you can work out. Just remember that those tomatoes are normally $1.29 a can on sale for 75cents. Then when you buy it in $20 increments, you get the $5 OYNO back. When you buy 28 cans for $21 (before the $5 catalina kick-back), each can of tomatoes is 75 cents. With the $5 off that price, the cost of the tomatoes drops to 52 cents a can. Is there a coupon for Hunts tomatoes? Add that and the price keeps dropping. All in all--Fabulous deal. And when planning your purchase strategy (3 month supplies, and all)--just remember that these are canned goods that most likely have expirations in 2012. Stock up. It's just money in the bank.