Smiths 1/9/12

Is it sad that my trip to the grocery store has become one of the highlights of my week? Sometimes of my month, since i don't go weekly?...

When i do my trip i am planning my entire month of food plus all my coupon items.. We budget $200 a month for groceries and couponing items. This trip i had a full list of all the things i needed plus a separate list of all my coupon items.. Luckily my food list was MOSTLY fresh fruits and veggies and a couple other loose odds and ends ( which added up ) BUT my coupons were all in order! We collected all of our items and headed to the register. Nate and i started making our bets, of what we thought the total would be. i could tell Nate thought we were going to be over budget. It didn't help that by the time everything was scanned it was showing 341!! I even panicked a little when i saw that! After we scanned our Fresh Values and handed her my stack of 50+ coupons all valued at a $1 or more we just watched the numbers go down and down. All the way down to 141. That is $59 dollars UNDER my budget and i am OK with that!
Spent $66 on groceries for the month & $75 on my coupon items
All of my couponed items would have been $195 which means on that alone i saved $120 with coupons and items being on sale.

Our haul included..
7- Old Spice Body Washes
7- Olay Body Washes
7- Secret Deodorants
14- Old Spice Deodorants
7- Boxes of Tide
7- Herbal Essence Hair Spray
8- Covergirl eye shadows

Our haul!

The receipt went down to my knees!!

Gracie loves when we make little forts for her!

Old Spice Deodorant Coupon Trip

So i did this shopping trip awhile ago and i wrote about it in my Journal but i am STILL talking about it so i figured i should blog about it too.. :)
My wonderful husband is VERY brand specific which for couponing is NOT ideal. But since i know the feeling of you like what you like, i work with it.  He uses Old Spice body wash and deodorant. We'll stick to the of the deodorant facts since that's what i bought.

At Walmart you can buy  (these are online prices)
*Twin pack for $4.47 that's about 2.24 a piece
*3 Pack for 7.68 which is 2.56 a piece
* or a single for 3.97
Just with that information ALONE you can tell it is of better value to buy the twin pack...  BUT with coupons you want to buy the single item. Because when you are buying the twin pack you are getting 2 products but they are being scanned as 1, so you can only use 1 coupon.
Smiths had a sale a while back that had their Old Spice deodorant marked WAY DOWN ( down far enough i would have bought it WITHOUT the coupon)  and i had a buy 1 get 1 coupon. I ended up buying 10 deodorants and spending $7.70 that was WITH tax!! That is .77cents EACH!!!

Random Smiths Trip

I will try and remember everything we got it was kind of a spur of the moment trip here is the run down.
KellogsCereal 15 boxes @ .67 cents
Kraft Salad Dressing 15 @ .99 cents
Colgate Toothe Paste 10 @ .25 cents
Pasta Roni 5@ .56 cents
Easy Mac 3 @.49 cents
and some couple loose odds and eats!
We spent 67 and some change out of pocket and save 98 dollars
On the list was Chicken, Ground Beef and Fresh Fruit. I was a little sad when we left the store because i really didn't want to spend more than $50 but once i started taking off the extra stuff like meat and fruit and other odds and ends i realized we were UNDER the $50!! So i left with a smiling happy face!

Sorry its side ways it wont turn!! But Nate wanted to carry in ALL 15 boxes on his own!!