Kroger

Had to take my kid for a Sports Physical today...
I thought we had done it back in Jan/Feb, but actually it was last June, and he has to have it before this Saturday's meet, and of course there was no appts at his Dr.'s open this week, so I had to find one of those quick care clinics like at CVS or Walgreens or what used to be at some of the Publix. The Little Clinic has apparently broke up with Publix and is going with Kroger now. The price at the Little Clinic at Kroger was $29, compared to $35+ at Wags or CVS, so that's where we went.

I didn't know there was a promotion, but they also gave me 500 gas points on my Kroger card for using them!

I didn't have very many coupons, people have been giving me some here and there, and it turned out I had (1) P&G from last and this month, so I had the $3.00 Febreeze and $2.00 Gillette BW coupons.

I doubted I'd even be able to find anything in stock, for all the shelf-clearers we have around here, but I somehow got lucky and found everything I was looking for, and then some.

I got the Febreeze Noticables warmer, on sale for $2.70 ($1.70 after the Mega sale)
My $3.00 coupon did work for the whole amount so I guess it went by regular price.
In the end, that gave me $1.30 overage.

$2.99 ($1.99 after Mega) Gillette Body Wash
- 2.00 coupon = Free + .01

That was the only coupon deals I had, but otherwise they had Gillette Foamy shave cream on sale for $1.24, or .24 after Mega sale, which is a great deal even without coupons. I got my son a couple of cans of that (he don't live with me, and I don't support him, so I'll tell him about the sale and let him go buy some more of his own. Mostly I was just trying to finish out a 4-item deal as cheaply as possible).

I also knew the Gillette shave Gel was $1.58, or .58 after Mega, but didn't give it much thought at first, but then while I was standing there I thought, I might not ever get shave gel this cheap again, the way things are going. My husband uses shave Gel, so I went ahead and bought 4 cans of that, too.

They also had some women's shave cream or gel, I forget the name of now, for $1.70, or .70 after Mega sale. I plan to tell my son's GF about that, but I didn't buy any for myself, I don't use it.

I also had a couple of the $1.00 Ronzoni Garden Delight coupons from the 5/15 insert (wow!) so got two boxes Free. They are on sale 10/$10.

Tyson Boneless Skinless chicken breast was on sale for $1.99lb, which is the usual sale price around here, I think. (Food Lion maybe has it for $1.77lb, but I may be misremembering?) Anyway, I grabbed a couple of packages.

Bread was .88, which is cheaper than .98 cents our Local Ingles has it for ($1.00 at Walmart).
And I just wanted some banana, they were .55lb which is the same as my local Walmart; mine were .36 cents.

I meant to look at the price of milk, but forgot. Blah.

Total Spent $9.13 including tax; down from $16-something originally.

Thrift Store Shopping

Friday was the monthly .50 clothing sale at a local thrift store I like to shop at.  I love .50 sale day!
I got there at opening and was able to find several pretties for all of us.

They don't usually have a large selection of men's clothes, but I was able to find several nicer collared shirts, which my guys - who live in t-shirts - were really short on.

I got the sheer, peach-colored blouse to wear over the black

cami-top.
Also found 3 pair of shorts, a couple long-sleeve shirts, a couple pair of pants (not jeans or slacks, I'm not sure what they're called otherwise, but pants), and 3 pair of jeans.  I was running low on jeans. Don't know what happens to the ones I have, they fit for awhile, then one day I put them on and don't like the way they fit anymore (no, not gaining any weight).

My cousin is getting married in a couple of weeks, so I was really hoping to be able to find a new dress for the occasion. I did find a couple of dresses for .50, but neither suitable for an after Labor day, evening wedding.

While I was out, I decided to go on and check out the Goodwill, my second favorite place to clothes shop. They aren't as cheap as .50, but compared to new clothes prices at the store, you still can't beat it. And they have a much larger selection of men's clothes.
My first stop was the men's blue jeans row.  All their jeans cost $6.96 each. Last time we shopped we found Ryan three really nice pair of Levi's, which go for $40.00 or better at Sears.

Both of the boys are skinny, and the smaller sizes aren't easy to come by.
I was able to find him a pair of Carharrt jeans, which also go for $40 at Sears.
Found Kevin a pair of Levi's identical to the ones he already has (but not cut up the inseams)

Then I looked at dresses. All the dresses (except formals) are only $5.95.

I bought four dresses, because I liked them, but I'm thinking I like this 40's (50's?) style housewife dress for the wedding.

The brown dress was on half-off sale, so I got it for $2.98.

I posted these pics on my Facebook page to let my family pick which one they liked best, and the majority picked this green/brown one.
I'm not real sure they realize I'm over 40 years old, lol.
This is a much younger lady's dress.
I love it, too, but I'm going to love it better on one of my young neices.

Altogether I spent right at $50.00 on everything.
I wouldn't even have been able to buy the boys' jeans alone for that at the dept. store.

I needed to go by (as in past) Food Lion in my travels today, so I figured as long as I was down there anyway, might as well stop in and check for meat deals, plus milk is cheapest there and since they double .55 coupons, my .55/2 Incredible egg IPs are worth more there than at Publix or Kroger.

$2.59 milk

$2.98/2 eggs (1.49 each)
- .55/doubled IP
= $1.88/2 (.94 each)

The fish portions are BOGO this week; or, at our stores, 50% off.
$3.50 Flounder (reg. $6.99)
$4.00 Salmon (reg $7.99)

$4.66 Bottom Round Roast (reg $9.50)
$2.64 Petite Boneless Sirloin (reg. $5.39)
$2.60 Boneless Pork Chops (reg. $5.32)
$1.93 Beef Sirloin Strips (reg. $3.95)
= $11.83 (reg $24.16) Savings $12.33

Pepsi Max deal...
$1.50 Pepsi Max 2ltr.
- .55/doubled Blinkie q found in front of the P.Max
= .40 each

Total:
$40.90 + 1.23 tax = $42.13

Receipt says I tendered $8.95 in coupons, when I didn't tender any coupons at all because I was chatting with the cashier and didn't even think to give them to her.
Then it says, You saved $8.95 using your MVP card! so I guess they're counting Sale prices as coupons.
Does that mean they're submitting to the manufacturer for reimbursement of their sale prices, I wonder?

I did get a Formal Printed coupon policy today, and yes, they are only accepting (1) IP per item, per order now.  (And no IP for free items, but still doesn't specify about BOGO coupons).
This is just so ridiculous. Publix or Kroger (well, maybe Kroger, I haven't shopped there in a long time, either) doesn't limit to (1) IP coupon, and they have way more/better sales than Food Lion, not to mention having 10 times more stores, so statistically they'd have to be taking in way more coupons. If they aren't worried about a huge loss from Fraud IPs, why is Food Lion?
Not to mention, with the *per order* qualifier, it just makes customers have to do multiple transactions, and then they still end up getting the multiple IP's they didn't want. Plus a pissed off, hassled customer.

I went to the CS desk after and redeemed my q's for $6.93 (.93 was tax back) in cash.
Final Total $35.20

Food Lion

I needed some meat (since I haven't gone shopping in three weeks or so) so I found some other deals that looked decent and headed off to Food Lion this morning.  I didn't have many coupons, and wasn't expecting to have trouble with the few I had.

I tried to buy 4 bags of the Budget-Saver Pops Coupons on sale for 2/$4.00, using (3) .50 coupons (mine double to 1.00) and (1) Buy 3 Get 1 Free coupon.
I think the register read the wrong barcode, but anyway it beeped to Check Data or something, so she entered the number manually and the .50/doubled coupons worked fine.  But then she typed in the last one and instead of 2.00, it took off .50/doubled. At which point I guess I should have just kept my mouth shut and ate the extra dollar, but no, I questioned it.

So then she tells me they can't take coupons for Free items. I said you can when it's a Buy One Get One coupon.
She calls over the CS girl and tells her that she had to type in the number for the three coupons, and they doubled even though the coupons say to not double, and that I said the other coupon should have took off $2.00.
The CS girl asks, are those internet coupons? We can only take one internet coupon.

So I said, you can have your stupid popsicles back.

It's crap like that that just pisses me to high heaven. They've never only accepted one internet coupon before, and the cashier obviously had no clue that that was supposed to be the rule.
When they changed the rule about accepting only one competitor coupon per transaction/per day, they put up a sign on the ad display and at all the registers informing customers of it.
There was no sign informing customers about only one internet coupon, and that's a pretty damn important change that people probably would like to know before they spend their time doing their shopping and getting hassled at the checkout!

$3.00 Tostitoes (Not as good as BOGO price of $3.99, but $3.00 is the next cheapest compared to Kroger, Publix, Ingles and Walmart)
No coupons

$3.99 BOGO ($2.00 each) Capt Crunch cereal
- .50/doubled 4/17 I think
= 1.00/.99 each
(My oldest son likes the All Berries so I stock up on these when they're BOGO and I have coupons for his worthless ass. Don't know why I do it. He sure as heck don't need them, big as he already is.)(No offense meant to overweight people, but he is extremely lazy and eats like a horse. Or two.)

$1.25 Sundrop soda
- .60/doubled Catalina mq from Kroger
- .50/2/doubled Catalina mq from Kroger
- .50/1 Food Lion q from Blue machine
= $2.30/5 or .46 each

$2.59 Milk (cheaper than $3.14 Walmart milk locally)

$.89 Pizza crust mix (.69 for Jiffy mix at Publix)

$7.11 Ground Chuck (reg. 10.17) 3.09lb
$7.20 Ground Chuck (reg. 10.30) 3.13lb
Cost $2.30lb.
Saved $6.16

Total Spent $37.36 + 1.26 tax = $38.62
Saved $14.18 using MVP card
*Reciept says I redeemed $22.88 in coupons, which I did not, Even if counting the Budget-Pops coupoms that were taken off it wasn't $22.88.

Publix

I really only wanted 2ltr sodas from Publix, on sale for .50 each, so how much trouble should I have had to gone through to get them?

The nearest Publix is a 40 mile round trip drive from me, so I wanted to be able to stock up while I was there. Otherwise, it's not worth the cost of gas to drive so far, and I'd come out the same just staying local and buying Sam colas at Walmart for .79 or 1.00 or whatever they cost these days.
I got 10 of the Cola, and 10 assorted other flavors for the boys.

I still had some Mahatma rice coupons in my folder expiring the end of this month I needed to get spent so I got 10 of the rice. I still have a couple more coupons, but recalled that most of the stores have put a 5 deal or 10 item limit.

I told my husband then I was probably going to have trouble buying 20 freakin' sodas. We decided if they gave me heartache, I'd buy 10 and he'd buy 10.

So we get to the register and the cashier scans my rice and tells me, "You can only use 5 coupons per item". WTF?!
So I was like, okay, I only have 1 coupon per item.
She aske how many I had? I said, 10 bags of rice, 10 coupons = 1 coupon per item.
No, no, they can only take 5 coupons for an item.
So I said I thought the limit was 10.

So she calls a CS girl over and the girl tells her no, it's a limit of 5 deals on the sale items. If it's not on sale, then they (we) can get as many as we want.

I asked to verify, 5 deals or 10 items, right?  She said no, only 5 deals on the sale items.
So I said well I have 20 sodas (and if she told me I could only buy 5 I was ready to throw them at her head). She ask how much were they and I said 2 for $1.00, so she says 5 deals, you can get 10.
ARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!

I got the pizza crusts because they were cheaper than Food Lion. I believe I foolishly think that buying them will help me to remember next time. Yeah, right.

Total $10.28 + .46 tax = $10.74
Saved $17.80

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