This week's Shopping Trips

Here are the goods from this week's trips to Publix and Kroger. It wasn't one of my better weeks--I spent about $85 total, which is way over what I typically try to spend, but there were a lot of fresh produce items on my lists this week as well as some higher priced items that I just plain needed and couldn't wait until they go on sale. I think the next thing I'm going to post on is name brand vs. store brand and brand loyalty...I get a lot of questions about that.

At any rate: Publix went pretty well...

Total Spent: $23.58

Total Saved: $24.37

My goal is always to save as much or more as I spend. This week was a good week. The packages of yogurt were a particularly good find--I got them for .25 each. They were BOGO (2/2.50) and I had a $1 off coupon for each. The cranberry juice came out to a pretty good sale, the salad came out to about $1 (it was BOGO plus I had a store coupon to stack). I also splurged on some Boar's Head deli meat, a bottle of water (I was so thirsty!) and a couple of eyeshadows, which were free. How do you get free eye shadow? In every Publix in the front when you first walk in there are Easy Saver catalogs. It's green and it's basically a sale paper with coupons inside. You can stack those coupons with a manufacturer's coupon to get some good deals. Cover girl eye shadow singles are $2.99. There is a $2.00 off coupon in the Easy Saver book and then there are $1.00 manufacturer coupons all the time in the paper, so you stack them and get free (well, a penny!) eye shadow.

Kroger:

Total Spent: $60.94

Total Saved: $19.49

Clearly I didn't reach my savings goal here, but there were just some things that we needed to stock up on. I figure that if I play the averages, almost every week I save more than this so every so often it's okay to spend a little more to stock up on the stuff that we need. I did get a good deal on the flat iron steak and the giant slab o' pork in the front there--I'm going to carve that up for a couple of night's worth of dinners. The Johnson's Buddies Soaps that are on the left were almost free. Johnson's puts out lots of coupons for these and you can find printables all over the web. The thing about the Buddies soaps are that they're always right around a dollar and the coupons are always for $1 off, so you can really stock up on these. They're actually free at Wal Mart, but the great thing about getting them at Kroger is that for every one you buy, the catalina printer (the gizmo that shoots out coupons with your receipt) will shoot out another $1 off coupon for another one. So you can "roll" this deal. From what I see so far, it will give you coupons up to 3 per transaction. So buy three for free with your coupons from the internet and then get catalinas for three more free. Pretty sweet, right? My friend Katie is stocking up on these and putting them in her kids' birthday goodie bags this year. Pretty smart! Plus, they're actually really good soaps--they last forever and the kids like them too.