It works!!

I had my very first coupon class on August 8th and one of the ladies that came to my class and ordered her 5 papers and followed what I taught her emailed me this today:

I did it! I did it! I did it!!!

Albertsons. I did a total of 3 transactions.

First Transaction: Spent $31.57, saved $42.19…. BUT I had a $5 coupon that printed out, plus the $20.00 mail in rebate (so really I only spent $11.57 on this transaction) (I also had a $4 coupon, among other coupons that I used, which was earned purchasing some ice cream last week.)

Second Transaction: Spent $3.64, saved $13.72 (I had a $4 coupon that had printed out from some ice cream I bought last week, so I used that on this transaction)

Third Transaction: Spent $1.57, saved $7.43 (I used my $5.00 coupon that printed out of my first transaction.)

Total after all of my coupons/rebates/sale items? Value of items: $100.12, spent (after my mail in rebate) $16.78

THANKS FOR SHOWING ME HOW TO DO THIS!!!!

FREE GROCERIES FROM ALBERTSONS!!

Yesterday I hopped onto the Grocery Smarts website and checked out the sales at Albertsons. I didn't need a ton of stuff because we are pretty well stocked. Right now they have a promotion where if you buy $25.00 worth of purchases then you get $5.00 off your next shopping trip and a $20.00 rebate - essentially making all those items free. Now here are some tricks you need to know when there are these types of promotions . . .

1. The $25.00 that you have to spend is BEFORE you use any manufacturer coupons!
2. The $5.00 of your next shopping order can be used immediately, you don't have to leave and then come back!
3. If you are going to receive a Catalina (the 5 off coupon) you can either do multiple transactions called Rolling or you can do one big transaction and save the Catalina's for your next shopping trip

Knowing these two tricks here is what I did to get these groceries for dirt cheap:
Transaction #1

I bought 10 California Pizza Flatbread Melts on sale for $2.50 bringing the value to $25.00
I clipped 10 $1/1 any California Pizza products making each item only $1.50 making my Out of Pocket only $11.50
I then purchased these pizzas on Friday where Albertson's gives you 20% of any pizza purchase which made each pizza onle $1.00 instead of $2.50
So for $10.00 I got 10 delicious flatbread melts (we had them for dinner - so good!) and I received a $5.00 off catalina

Transaction #2
This transaction didn't have any promotions attached just a few items that I was running low on or was completely out of.
I bought 4 Ken's salad dressings on sale for $1.69
I clipped 4 $1/1 Ken's dressings from the Smart Source making them .69 a piece
I bought 2 3 lb boxes of corn dogs on sale for 3.99 this item had no coupon
I bought 1 Albertson's ranch dip packet on sale for .73
My order rang up to $11.47 after the Albertson's rewards were applied.
I then used my $5.00 catalina which is used like a coupon and it dropped my price down to $6.47 essentially making the dressings and the dip packet and a portion of 1 box of corn dogs free!

So for all of these items I spent out of pocket 16.47 BUT I also received a $20.00 rebate form from the pizza's so after mailing that in and recieving the $20.00 it is like I received all of these groceries FREE PLUS 3.60 BACK!!!

Have questions? Email me and I will be happy to answer any questions you have about couponing or using the grocery smarts website

Smith's is where I go for my staples!

For those of you who do not know this about me . . . I have been using Grocery Smarts since March of 2009 and I started doing Weight Watchers at about the same time. I have lost 25 lbs by following the Weight Watchers and by making sure that every week I find the best deals on my meats, dairies and produce so I have healthy staples on hand! I have found that I love both Albertsons and Smith's produce, I believe they are equal in taste and freshness but Smith's typically has the lowest priced produce and milk and more sales on cheese, sour cream and butter than Albertson's. So every week I stop by Smith's and buy my milk, veggies, and sour cream then whatever fruit is on sale I buy as well. I wasn't going to buy any treats at smith's until I saw that cookies and Rice Krispies were $1.00 after the promo and coupons I had . . . and well I couldn't pass that up!!!

As a side note your savings percentages are never high when buying meat, dairy and produce because it is based on market value.

Using the Grocery Smarts Website

For those of you who haven't attended a class but want to start saving money let me tell you the very basics of using the Grocery Smarts website.

The first thing you are going to need to do when you get to the website is to enter a passport, the one for Las Vegas users is G89CKM. By entering this passport it takes you to a Nevada page where you can access information for the stores in Nevada and also for the alphabetical coupon index that is an entire compilation of all CURRENT COUPONS Nevada residents have received in their inserts.

Once you have entered the passport you should see a page with a NV map and an option to select a store. The stores you can select from are CVS, Walgreens, Albertsons, Smith's, Food 4 Less, Vons, Wal-mart and Sunflower Market.

After you have chosen your store you are going to click on the START button at right hand top of the page! By clicking on the start button the entire grocery list will be grayed out. After clicking on the gray button click on the STAR above the words stock up sale. This will make all four and five star items white.

You can now go through the list and click on any items you want and unclick any items you don't want. The items that are white are the ones that will stay on your shopping list, the items that are gray will go away when you shrink your list.

After you have made your selections you can type in any other needs you need from the store at the bottom of the list where is says: type other items and notes here

Now go back to the top of the page and click SHRINK. This will get rid of all the gray items and you can now review what you have selected to buy. If there is anything you need to change click on UNSHRINK and make the correction, then shrink it again.

You can now print out your own personalized Grocery shopping list! I hope that helps you all!

JACKPOT!!!

Holy Cow did you see the coupons in today's paper? First there was the Smart Source that is in every Sunday's paper, then there was a bonus General Mills insert plus two McDonald's coupons for a free medium fry and drink with the purchase of a triple angus burger! Because I get 4 papers each sunday I recieved 8 Mcdonald's coupons 4 Smart Source and in one of my papers there were 3 General Mills inserts so I recieved 6 of those!! Talk about HUGE SAVINGS!!!

Get Your Inserts!

Are you one of the lucky ones who gets the Red Plum and Proctor & Gamble in your mail? If not then head on over to Coupons by Dede and pick up your inserts! If you looked at the Albertsons list this week there are tons of coupons used from the Kellog's insert (which came in last week's junk mail). If you looked at Smith's they have their Proctor & Gamble sale going on still so make sure you pick up the August 2nd P&G inserts! Click on my side link to head over to Dede's website and pick them up before they run out!

What do you want to know?

Because there are so many different money saving and couponing blogs and websites out there I thought I would post a question to my viewers . . . If there was one thing you would want to learn or read about in regards to couponing what would it be? I will then take what you want to learn and do posts about them. Leave me a comment with one thing you expect to learn from this blog! Thanks!