Random deals

I’m taking a slight break for the weekend, Giant wore me out this week! Giant looks very blah next week, which is fine with me.

Starting tomorrow–superdoubles at Kmart, coupon value up to $1. Limit 5 per day. I’ll post any decent matchups if I see them.

CVS and Walgreen’s looking blah again, I’ll post anything extraordinary if I see it posted.

Superfresh has great deals this week, and I found out yesterday that if you get a 10% off coupon, it will come off of your pre-supercard savings. Very cool!

Acme has a Kraft deal and an Edy’s deal. Kraft is instant savings combined with a catalina. Edy’s catalina was not working yesterday, may want to hold off on buying that stuff if you can.

I get my Sunday paper today. Old Navy has good coupons 10/50 or 15/50 if your kids need back to school stuff. Good coupon inserts this week, an entire General Mills insert, so hopefully a good deal coming soon at Acme.

Staples has very good BTS deals, printable coupons online.

Superfresh ad: Aug 6-12

I don’t usually shop quite this often! I usually do one main trip for our weekly needs. Then if there are freebies or good deals to be had some place, I do that too. But there are just so many freebies (Giant!) and good deals, I’ve been at a store almost every day this week. And I have so many catalinas to roll at SF, I will definitely be headed there this weekend at some point.

Ok, good deals and some coupon matchups that I see from this week’s ad:

Beef Tenderloin-6.99/lb. Great price for this, but you will have to purchase the whole thing. They will cut it for you. Or you can look at Food Network or Food TV for instructions on how to do it yourself, if you’d like to reach your inner celebrity chef.

Grapes-0.79lb, through Sunday only. I recently saw grapes at Acme for 5.99/lb!

Pepsi products-0.79 a 2 liter. I’ve become addicted to the Tropicana Orangeade, ever since I was in CC Hospital having our second child. Afterwards, it was just so cold and sweet, it really hit the spot. I water it down though, too syrupy otherwise. Tropicana is a Pepsi product and usually included in Pepsi deals.

Blue Bunny Ice Cream novelties- on sale for 1.99. Buy $12, get $3 catalina promo. Shelf price for most of these is 4.19. So buy 3 to get to the $12 threshhold. Pay 5.97, get $3 back. Even better yet, I spotted peelies on some of them recently for $1.25! If you can find those, you’ll pay $2.25, get $3 back.

Dannon yogurts-10 for $4 or $0.40 each. I refuse to pay more than $0.60 each for a cup of yogurt. I see it for $1.05, $1.15….that’s just ridiculous. Pick cups with long expiration dates, figure out how many you need, and stock up. $0.40 a cup is a great price, if you have the $1 off 10 cups coupon that was in the paper recently, even better!

There’s a Unilever buy 20 get 5 deal. I checked the shelf vs sale prices when I went in to get Scrubbing Bubbles.
Lipton teas-shelf 4.19, sale 2.99; 0.50 coupon in last week’s paper that will double
Popsicle novelties-3.27, sale 1.99–I’ve seen $1 off 2 coupons on freezer doors for these
Ben & Jerry’s! shelf 4.39, sale 2.50. I’m very excited about this one. I don’t know of any corresponding coupons to go with this, unfortunately.
Unilever also encompasses Ragu, Wishbone and Hellmann’s. Remember–use the shelf price to get to your $20 mark, but only pay the sale price. And there was a big Unilever coupon insert in last week’s paper.

Kellogg’s-Ack! You’d really think that with all the free Kelloggs I hauled away from Giant this week, that I wouldn’t be interested. But I am! Their deal is the same–buy 10 participating Kellogg’s items, get a $10 catalina. What’s different here though, is that I don’t know that Superfresh will also do the $10 instant savings. That’s a significant price difference, but I’m tempted to try it anyway. Because……..they are including all the Keebler fudge shoppe cookies, and I’m completely addicted to the fudge sticks. What could be better than a chocolate covered sugar wafer? Not sure I want 10 packs of them though. They also are including the Special K line, but it doesn’t list any cereal or Eggos as being included.

A catalina on Greenworks cleaning products–get $3 when you spend $30. Very lukewarm about that return on investment! But remember, it should work on the whole shelf/sale price concept and you can use coupons.

Speed Stick and Edge Skintimate are all $2. There were $0.75 coupons in last week’s paper that will double. Though on the Skintimate/Edge, you may want to wait it out, Acme often sells them for $1.50.

Skippy and Welch’s are 1.50. I have $1 off 2 coupons for both of these items, I think it was from last week. $1 each!

That’s all I see for now, if I see more, I’ll add updates. Don’t forget to check online with your Superfresh card to see if you can piggyback more savings on to these sales!

Organic food/Sports Authority offer

Here is an offer to get some gift cards from Sports Authority. Purchase $10 or $20 worth of Earth’s Best, Garden of Eatin or their other products, and send in receipts.

Hamburger Helper & schizophrenic shopping

It’s being discussed again on hcw and it’s a comment I hear quite a bit. The “I’d love to save money with coupons like you do, but we don’t eat Hamburger Helper.”

Guess what? Neither do we.

Or the “well, we don’t really eat processed foods.”

Ha ha. Yes you do. Find me something, anything, that is in today’s supermarkets that isn’t processed in some way. You can’t. I suppose you could drive up to Lancaster county and get yourself some raw milk. Barftastic.I’m not really a fan of diarrhea, so I’ll take mine pasteurized thankyouverymuch.

But I get what you’re saying. You don’t want to eat or feed your kids foods that have a lot of sodium and other preservatives in them. Neither do I. I try to strike a balance. Not going to lie, my kids eat (probably too many) spaghettios. But they also eat tons of fresh produce from the growers market too.

The Today show did a segment on what they called “Schizophrenic Shopping” this morning. I didn’t watch all of it, but the gist of it was–there’s a new trend (not new to me!) to save money on the things that aren’t important to you, so that you have extra money to splurge. Hmmm, that sounds familiar!

That’s what I try to do. These are the things, that literally, I have not paid for, in years: breakfast cereal, diapers, wipes, printer ink, paper, pens, pencils, tape, deodorant, shampoo & conditioner, hair spray & other products, razors, batteries, tampons & pads, most office supplies and crayons, baggies & ziplocs, soft drinks (Snapple, Gold Peak, Fuze, Sobe), spaghetti sauce, macaroni & cheese, lotions, body wash, facial cleansers, any home cleaning product you can think of, paper towels, napkins, toilet paper, most of my greeting cards, photo prints & photo books, granola bars, kids juice boxes, laundry detergent, fabric softener, dish detergent, dishwasher detergent, movie passes, makeup, ice cream, frozen veggies, canned soup……..and I’m sure my couponing friends will think of more items that we get for free.

So while I certainly do bargain my way to free macaroni & cheese and spaghettios, as you can see, it’s not all about the Hamburger Helper. Yes, it is very easy to find deals on the processed foods. I could build a house out of all the free Poptarts I could get this week if I wanted to. But I also scored free whole wheat bread and skim milk too. I get lots of very cheap or free yogurt.

It is possible to eat healthy and save money. Because I’m not spending $5 on a box of Cheerios, I don’t bat an eye at the fresh mozzarella at $8 per lb. I don’t want to pay $4 for a stick of deodorant, because I don’t have to. I’d rather spend that $4 on fresh cantaloupe at the growers’ market.

I’ve even gotten FREE organic vodka.

According to this article from the  Wall Street Journal, your average extreme-couponer “tend to be females under the age of 54 with college degrees and household incomes above $70,000.”

Unfortunately, the people who need to be doing this activity are not. Those folks are eating Hamburger Helper. Because sadly, that’s all they can afford.