Making Life a Little Less Expensive Every Week

Making Life a Little Less Expensive Every Week

Here in Orange County California we benefit from fierce competition in the grocery industry. Not only do they compete with each other (Albertsons, Ralphs, Stater Brothers, and Vons) they compete with various small market chains (Henry's, Sprouts, Trader Joe's, and a host of independent markets. In addition both Target and Walmart carry a limited, but well priced, selection of grocery staples. With so many choices it is easy to simply pick a store and hope you don't burn through your budget halfway through shopping. But, with a little effort and a little more driving, you can dramatically trim your grocery expenses. You can put the savings towards the ridiculous cost of housing.


Coupons

Making a Coupon Stockpile

The quickest source of coupons is the sunday paper. Each week there are anywhere from one to three coupon circulars (P&G Brandsaver, Red Plum, and Smart Source). The Sunday paper(Register or Times) costs $1.50.But they both also issue a weekend edition of their paper, which is remarkably similar, for 75 cents. I buy one of each (Register and Times) for a total cost of $1.50. This give two sets of coupons, which some weeks works out fantastically and some weeks not so good. But each paper has a diferent selection of ads (these vary from paper to paper and even from week to week).

Be sure to physically check the paper for coupon circulars since store-bought papers do not always get the same coupons as a home-delivered paper. The delivered paper may have three circulars this week but the one in the store could have one, two, three, or even zero coupons. So just be sure to check before you buy.

Alternately you can order subscriptions online. Though the Times wants $2.50 a week to deliver the Sunday paper. But a quick google search will often turn up deals or promo codes for a dollar a week. Recently in LA the Times was offering a year of Sundays for 19 cents a week.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Drugstores Week 3

CVS w 310 products for under nine bucks
This was an excellent week for bargain shopping. Though I could have done better. CVS had some stellar deals when combined with coupons and ebs. I did two transactions, which I rarely do even though it is an effective cost cutter, which netted ten products for under nine bucks including tax. But I have 12.50 in ebs left over for next week.
At Wags I got grocery products and my wife got some cosmetic beauty tools.
Rite Aid was practically throwing crap at me. I had to go to another branch since the shelves at mine were bare. But I got five things, plus $1.00 +up, for $1.61.
 Rite w 3 All this for $1.67
All told the stuff was about 60% off and I still have $12.50 ebs and $4.00 +up to use next week. So for around twenty bucks I got 28 items and 13.50 reward dollars (remaining from a total of $23 this week. That averages $0.73 an item. As usual you can check out the individual pages for a more intensive breakdown.
The breakdown is as follows.
StoreCash OutlayReward $Retail Cost
CVS$8.60$21.99$28.03
Rite Aid$1.67$1$11.85
Walgreens$10.11$0$20.31
Total$20.38$22.99$60.19

So the three week tally is:
StoreCash OutlayReward $Retail Cost
CVS$31.38$36.99$90.91
Rite Aid$17.40$7.00$47.83
Walgreens$20.54$0$41.20
Total$69.32$43.99$179.94
Posted by Lindley C Himes at 12:28 PM
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