Something to Brag about....

Occasionally, I've been known to toot my own horn. Here is another occasion--"toot, toot!" I just got back from Albertsons'. It's Tuesday night. Didn't have any plans or purchases in mind for the eleventh hour of the sales' week. But my neighbor across the street has taken some of my tips and put them to good use. Well...today she gave me her extra doublers from the Sunday paper. Not wanting to waste a precious coupon doubler, I went to the computer at 8:30pm to refresh myself with the sales' ad and figured that it might be worth a trip down the hill to my favorite grocery haunt. I decided a mere 4 transactions would suffice--but I brought the 100 toothbrush coupons I recently ordered off of ebay...for a "just in case" back-up item to use any extra doublers. And as would have it, the toothbrushes were on sale for $1.19 (doubling the $1 off coupon allowed me to subtract 81cents x3 coupled/doubled for a total of $2.43 in overage per transaction). So doing transactions with three toothbrushes and smaller amounts of groceries, I had final amounts ranging from 17-89 cents per transaction. Doing 10-12 transactions really paid off...to the tune of $165.84 in savings. And for all of the viewers who stand in judgment of the value of couponing--please note the items that were "purchased" in "coupon cash" rather than liquid cash--like produce and milk; which are items that generally don't have a coupon specifically for them available. If I had freezer space and forethought--we would have been having steak for dinner tomorrow instead of cereal! Oh well. Better plans next time :)

So--here's what I got for $11.88!!
3 gallons of milk
8 boxes of General Mills Cereals
12 bags of Malt-o-Meal cereals
6 avocados
6 large apples
2 bunches of green onions
1lb of carrots
3lbs of bananas
22 Gum Toothbrushes
2 bottles Kikkoman's Teriyaki sauce
2 bottles Kikkoman's Teriyaki glaze
8 jars of Prego spaghetti sauce
21 cans of Starkist Tuna

Now, if I had paid regular price for all of these items, before any coupons, etc...this total would have been $177.72. But I paid $11.88 and came home with a $1.oo OYNO Catalina coupon, 35 cents off of gasoline for up to 20 gallons, and 4 free movies from Redbox--woo hoo!! So the little jaunt to my favorite haunt was well-worth the time. I shutter to think what I could have done if I had come prepared with a grundle of coupons and a method to my madness. Tonight was just a great reminder of what kind of good you can do without a lot of money or time.