My first try at a match up!

One of my favorite bloggers, Fabulously Frugal actually beat me to this post but for those of you who don't read it, here is my take on the Summer Block Party starting tomorrow at Albertsons.
So here it goes...
You get a $2.00 catalina coupon for every 2 participating items between 7-20 and 7-26
One thing I was able to remember is that facebook has a coupon we can use for this!
here

According to the fur-gals!, these will be $4.99 each when you by 2 tomorrow but with the facebook coupon for $1.00 off  so it will be $8.98 for 2...then you get the $2.00 catalina so it would really be like paying 6.98 :) so 3.49 a box.

OK the next deal i found was on the Skinny Cow multipack ice creams. again using the intel from ff, these will be 4.99 each as well.

I took a picture of the fudge pops but the deal posted is for the ice cream sandwiches. If you sign up for SavingStar you can get a $1.00 rebate! so again technically it would be the same price as the drumsticks.

since I am running out of time, i am going to let the Fabulously Frugal Gals give you the rest of the match ups. I want to do a quick post on my double deals I did today before I head off to school. So click here for the Fabulously Frugal Albertsons Match Up!

Paperless coupons!

We are very fortunate to have the Internet. As a couponer, you can only get so far redeeming manufactures coupons from your Sunday paper so one thing that I have started really looking into is e coupons.

There are various sights that offer e savings.Some I have tried, some I looked into but haven't really tried.

The first one I tried is a store here in the Northwest called Fred Meyer, I believe they are affiliated or owned by Kroger? Kroger has the same kind of deal so I will just continue with my thought...(it's 1 am on finals week, forgive me if I am a little scatter-brained!) When you register on their site with your rewards card. After that then you can add coupons to your rewards card! It takes about an hour for them to come up on your card but you have less coupons to worry about! Plus at my Fred Meyer they have coupons everywhere! So you can use the instore coupons too!

The other one that I signed up for recently is Safeway, or Randall's or whatever it is called in your area. Again, less coupons to carry and Safeway is one of the few stores that allows store coupons to be used with manufactures coupons. Some even offer double coupons up to .50 cents.

Now for the one that I am still trying to figure out. it's kind of new, it's called Saving Star. if you have read the other blogs like I do, it has been mentioned a couple times. with this sight you can earn $ back and get rebates in the form of gift cards, through paypal or by check. These rebates can take up to thirty days to appear on your account and they start paying out after $5.00 is reached in your account. Find more info here  .

day 36

Total savings this year, $37.33 :)

Ok one thing I have noticed while looking at tomorrow's ads if that everyone is starting their school supply sales. I love school supply shopping! Crazy right? Well as I have said I go to night school, so I use supplies for that and in September my daughter will be starting 3rd grade and my son will be in preschool :) As if that was not enough reasons to buy school supplies here is my other reason...Scrap booking!

I started scrap booking before my daughter was born because my boyfriends mom at the time owned a scrap booking shop. Instead of getting flowers after fights I would get scrap booking supplies and it grew from there! But with a new boyfriend (who ended up being my husband 7 years ago today) I no longer got a free supply of scrap booking goodies so I had to figure out a way to make scrap booking affordable.

There are a couple supplies I will not scrimp on like acid free card stock paper and acid free glue. But when you can find these on clearance or at over stock stores like Big Lots they can be pretty cheap. Also I only buy the 8 and a half by 11 papers...why?

Binders!

Especially the ones with the clear pockets on the outside. I decorate the front and back with my own creative covers. they might not be as professional looking as those store bought books but I don't know about you but I can't stand the way professional books are put together with the screws. That and you have to take the book almost completely apart to add pages. I find it very annoying.

Another reason why I buy 8 and a half by 11 paper is because I can use sheet protectors.

By using the sheet protects I can make sure that my pages stay nice and have the extra protection. I highly recommend this way of scrap booking especially this time of year...it saves so much money!
Example:

@ my local walmart - this album
is $19.99
A scrap booking kit costs $14.99 but the album matches the paper which leaves little room for creativity.

also at my local wal mart
A standard binder like the one shown above is only $3.47 (1/2 inch for smaller scrapbooks, 3 inch binders usually are about $5
25 sheet protectors are $7.94



I usually buy the 100 count. On the website it says that they are $11.94 however, when they go on sale...which should be soon, I can usually buy them for cheaper then that. In the 9 years I have been scrap booking I have only gone through 3 packages of sheet protectors and have 6 scrapbooks that I have used them in :) In the long run, my way is much cheaper. Maybe one of these days when I am not so focused on couponing I will show you my binder scrapbooks. Have a nice day!

My views on blog match ups

Several of the blogs I read offer match ups. Match ups are when the blogger looks at the ad and has knowledge of their own coupon inventory or coupons that are available from other sources. One website that almost every one checks is the Sunday preview.

I don't know how this website gets it's sources but they are usually right depending on which insert you actually get. Metro news papers differ from suburban news papers, thus the reason why I started buying different papers other then just my local paper.

Bloggers live all over the us, and some even in Canada. The cost of living is different in other cities as well so when you read a blogger's coupon match up you have to take into consideration where they are coming from. I am lucky enough to live in a state that doesn't pay sales tax so if I were to do a match up it would be slightly different then other places. Also some locations price differently based on the local area so if I read a blog from say Portland which is 100 miles away from me, some of our deals will not match up exactly either.

Bloggers tend to give you a key to read their match ups as well. once you get the key down it isn't all gibberish but it still is a bit to keep track of so I have taken to glance at their match ups and then go to the stores web site (say Walgreens for instance) and check the ad myself for my area so that I can figure out what will work for me.

Basically in short, what I am saying is go ahead and read the match ups but also do your own research, maybe you will catch something they didn't!

My day at Target

Well today was an interesting shopping trip to Target. I am going to do this a bit differently then I normal do my "haul" posts. As much as us new couponers have been getting a bad rep (don't steal inserts, don't clear shelves!) there are some cashiers who just do not like couponers period. I have been a cashier, I knew cashiers who were couponers. Yes, it takes a couple extra minutes to go over the coupons and ring them in. Yes, sometimes you have to manually key in the coupon if the printable coupon does not scan. And us NICE new couponers, will be patient and promise not to jump your tail end over every little coupon. If my coupon doesn't work I am ok with that, i will even put the item back FOR YOU.

(sigh) sorry ok little rant is over, needless to say I had a not so nice/smart cashier today at Target. Here is how my transaction should have gone. ( I do want to say that this is a good thing and a bad thing before I start this 'should have been' scenario and you will see why when i tell you what really happened.)

So as some of you may have noticed, I like going to Target now because you can stack a Target printable coupon with a manufacturers coupon.
I started out in the food section, my target is not a super target yet, so they have a very small food section. I printed out the new coupon from coupons.com for buy 3 pop tarts save $2.00, Target also had new coupons today that included a $1 off of three boxes. 

I had two of each coupon, so 6 boxes of pop tarts...yum!

6@ 2.65 ea = 15.90 - $6 = 9.90, or 1.65 a box.

Then I had 3 Hershey's chocolate bars from last Sunday's paper. $1 off of 2 pkgs. A while back I had printed the target coupon for .50 cents off of 1.

So I bought 6

6@ $2.49 ea = 14.94 - 3.50 = 11.44, or approx 1.91 a package

Target also has there back to school displays already started...my daughter just got out of school 3 weeks ago! However they had some great coupons for back to school at Target.com

Besides they had composition books for .25 cents, I got these really great deals

(whoa wow, I just realized that my not so nice cashier nor myself realized that I got the wrong pencils!)

Paper mate products, for 1.09 . $1 off target printable makes it .09 cents!

Bic writing utensils .99 cents each, I decided to be nice and buy 2. so original price was 1.98 - $1 target printable = .98 for 2

Sharpie permanent marker, original price 1.54 - $1 target printable = .54!

Then I needed to get storage bags...



These were on sale for $2.99 and yes I had $1 off target printable for this too so my total was 1.99 :)

(some locations you might be lucky enough not to have a peelie stealer and be able to get this down just a little bit more.)

... and to top off my shopping trip I needed dog food, Target had Kibbles and Bits on sale for 11.49...no coupon for this one, it was just a good deal :)

So the right way that my transaction should have gone. My 8 year old daughter would hand the coupons to the cashier who would say thank you and then would begin to ring up our transactions.

Here is how it should have came out: 21.34 in food stamps and 15.34 out of pocket, total = 36.68. Thank you and have a nice day :)

............................ Instead this is how my transaction really went.

-My daughter was making sure she had all the coupons when the lady held out her hand for them and put them on the counter.

-The lady rang up our order and then went to look at the coupons. She rubbed one printable coupon up against the scanner with force and says "These printable coupons never work, they are such a pain in the butt."

- Then instead of keying in the coupon sku she uses a master code to take off the coupon amount...of all the coupons!

Food Stamp balance, $27.84. Out of pocket cost $9.74 , total cost 37.58 (the main discrepancy being that I did not get the paper mate pencils, I accidentally bought the bic pencils which are 1.99)

Now like I said this is a good thing and a bad thing. It's a bad thing because the cashier did not do her job correctly...at all! She should be courteous to all patrons, check the coupons with the products and use the correct coupon codes, then we would have approx 5 more dollars on our food stamps.

However since she did not do her job correctly I do not feel bad that we only paid 9.74 for a big bag of dog food, storage bags and school supplies. What have you found out about cashiers when you use coupons? Have a safe and happy Fourth of July





Printable coupons, where to find them and more!

Being the first of the month, this is the best time to print out your monthly coupons. Now granted they add coupons to most sights throughout the month but a lot of them reset at the beginning of the month.

A little advice on printing coupons. Most sights will only allow you to print a coupon twice from a computer. Extreme couponers have several coupons, since I am just starting out I have my house computer and my little notebook laptop computer. So once I have gone through and printed all the ones I want off of my home computer I unhook my printer ( it would be nicer if I had a wireless printer, I just turned one down last weekend, now I wish I didn't) and print the same coupons from my notebook. I have found that the more coupons you have the more you seem to save.

The best source for online coupons is Coupons.com

Go to coupons.com

Another great source for printable coupons is the Grocery Coupon Network

Go to Coupon Network

There are other sites like this one that will allow you to load coupons onto your savings card, but to be honest I haven't tried a lot of them but I hope to soon.

The other two good ones are Smart source and Red Plum... these are the same that bring you the inserts in the Sunday papers :)

I might have mentioned it before but another favorite tip of mine is that there are store out there that will let you combine a manufacturers coupon with a store coupon. My favorite being target. You can get target coupons here!

The new stipulation for this type of coupon stacking is that you can not use two bogo (buy one get one ) coupons...however ask other stores , the last one I heard was that Walgreen's will allow you to do this, therefore getting the item free, but do not quote me on that.

On a side note, I know that some family members of mine are traveling this holiday weekend so i want to say to you as well as them, Be Safe and have a great 4th. 



Day 26...

I am very very sorry for my absence, like I said in my previous blog I got a visit from the mean old bill fairy who turned off my Internet because I was behind in payments. Something i do intend to work on. Also, I needed to write my research paper for Law an Ethics, so ethically that was more important then my blog, but I can catch you up over the last 2 weeks.

Like I have said before I do not do much couponing during the week in between school and the family it is a bit hard. So last Saturday (June 25th) I stayed up until 5 am writing my research paper. As the sun started to come up I thought to myself, " I better get a couple of hours of sleep if I intend on getting my coupons and going shopping." I set my alarm for 7 am.

I was still a bit tired when the alarm went off so I asked my husband to go get my papers. He was able to get my 2 local papers but when he asked about The Oregonian ( Portland Oregon's newspaper, usually has better regional ads) they were already completely out of them. I was really disappointed. So my sweet understanding husband (not the one that is sometimes clueless about my needs[ :) ] ) decided to take me all over town searching desperately for an Oregonian. We went clear across Eugene and Springfield and out to the rural town of Veneta , one way is about 20 miles. No luck. So lesson learned, we will get up at 6 am every Sunday to get the paper.

So as far as the world of couponing that should catch you up. now I will write my advice blogs :)