This Weekend's Deals (12/20-21/2008)

I must say that I'm horribly bummed out about the weather. I had grand plans of a day of CVS shopping, and I only got around to finishing about half of it. Here's to hoping for better weather tomorrow, but it's only a TWO day sale... today and tomorrow. The bright side is that less people will be braving the storm and hopefully there will be a few freebies left tomorrow.

So, just to give an idea of what it looks like here and why I'm complaining, here are a couple of photos of our front yard when I got back from my shopping trip:

Now, on to the fun stuff!
On Saturday night, I made a quick trip out for some baby wipes. I got an email from Toys R Us for when you buy 2 boxes of wipe refills, you get an $8 gift card (GC). Now, there was no way in heck that I was going to shell out $23 for wipes out of my own pocket, so it was time to work out a plan. I happened to have $75 in GC's from Hannaford... one in the amount of $50 that I bought for $45 in order to get some free baking mixes and another for $25 that I got from a store mgr from complaining about his cashier giving me a hard time about the coupons that I was using - not that I am encouraging complaining, but that's just where that came from... So, with those GC's I bought two $15 GC's for TRU.

So, with my $30's in GC's, I head to TRU and get the two boxes of wipes:

6 refills per box/360 ct total; cost 11.49 each

Leaving $7 on one GC and a new GC for $8... which I used to buy some stocking stuffers for Jaden. All practical stuff... HA HA. I'm sure he will be thrilled with the outlet covers as well as the tools to keep him out of the cabinets. LOL

Cost = Approximately $15 with a few pennies left on one GC

NOW... on to the best part of the weekend shopping!! CVS had 17 items this week - well Mon & Tues ONLY that were FREE after Extra Care Bucks (ECBs). That's right! SEVENTEEN! Not to mention many other items that were on sale. AND of those 17 items, some you could get up to 5 items per CVS card. My goal was to use coupons to increase my 23ECBs that I already had so that I could get the digital picture frame that they had on sale for FREE! In order to do that, I had to make several transactions and collect coupons for these particular items.

Here's how I made out...

Transaction #1:
2 L'Oreal HIP eyeshadow
2 Sally Hansen nailpolish
1 Listerine
1 Right Guard Pro Strength deodorant
1 Bath Sponge
1 small tube of CVS hand lotion (miscalculated and needed to grab something quick at the register to get to $28 to avoid losing any ECBs

Total Cost after discounts and 23 ECB's = $0.44; total savings = $42.78

Transaction #2:
2 Listerine
2 Right Guard
2 Thermacare neck to arm heatwrap 1 ct
2 Halls Naturals 25ct.
1 Alteril sleep aid
1 EAS Advantedge shake 4pk
1 Eas AdvantEdge bar 2.11oz
1 travel size pack of feminine prods

Total Cost after discounts and ECB's earned from first transaction = $11.04; total savings = $57.32 (This one was a mistake, because I somehow mixed my planned txn 2 with txn 3, so my total cost was much higher than intended, but it all worked out as I was able to get more stuff in fewer txns.)

Transaction #3:
2 Listerine
2 Sleepinal
1 Benefiber
1 Zantac
1 Blade Body Spray
1 Essence of Beauty Bag
1 First Aid Kit
1 ZipFizz Energy Drink
1 SlimQuick Energy Drink
1 Excedrin
1 Ice Breakers

Total Cost after discounts and ECB's earned from previous transaction (less $1.69) = $1.15; total savings = $82.41

Transaction #4:
1 Digital Picture Frame
1 Blade Body Spray
1 Small First Aid Kit

Total Cost after discounts and ECB's earned from previous transaction (less $1.69 from txn #2) = $0.75; total savings = $94.11

Total Money Spent (on CVS GC earned from a transferred Rx) = $13.38
Total Savings for the day = $276.62 or approximately 95%
Current ECB's = 21.69 (snow snow go away and don't come back another day! I need to shop!)

Getting Ready for 2009!

The purpose of this blog is to keep track of my savings, brag about what I'm getting for little or no money out of pocket and most importantly ... to keep my friends informed!! Everyone asks me... "How'd you get all that stuff so cheap?!" Now... I will tell you all of my secrets through my blog.

First I guess, I should introduce myself... my name is Christy (obviously based on the title of my blog) and I'm a couponaholic. I live with my wonderful boyfriend, Jeff, my darling baby, Jaden, and my fantastic brother, Ben. I spend a good bit of my free time scouring the internet for deals and sorting out my coupons as that seems to be a never ending task.

I just started couponing n the fall of 2008. I was incredibly surprised to find out how much money can be saved by using coupons and was quickly addicted. In the past, I found it terribly expensive to keep the pantry stocked, but now... I'm spending much less money and I have way more stuff on hand than ever.


To get started, you will definitely need a subscription to the newspaper to get some coupons or better yet, find a way to get the inserts for free like I do (Jeff brings about 12 copies home from work for me every Sunday morning). I would suggest getting the newspaper from the nearest city as the smaller, local papers don't always have all of the coupons. If you take my advice on this point, you will sometimes have better coupons than I do as I don't always get some of the best coupons, but since my inserts are FREE, I'm not going to waste anymore time complaining about that.

Other good sources for coupons... www.smartsource.com and www.thegrocerygame.com. I find tons of internet printables (IPs) on these sites. I also visit sites for products that I use frequently and sign up for promotional emails in hopes that they will be sending out some coupons

My favorite shopping spot at the moment is CVS! I also get a lot of good deals at Shaws (just be sure to shop the sales and not everything else there) and I'm all about the Kmart Super Double Coupon events (I wish they'd just publish a schedule for this, rather than keeping us guessing on when the next one will be!). If there are things that I absolutely have to get - foodwise - I'll go to Market Basket as I think they have the lowest prices, but I tend to get better deals at the other stores by shopping the specials with coupons.

And just in case you're wondering... I don't always come up with these deals on my own. There are a few websites where I find I read the forums for advice, so I can't take all of the credit, but I do come up with some of these on my own.

I think that's all I've got for now... I'm planning a big shopping spree for CVS tomorrow. My next post should be the results of that shop... Can't wait for some Sunday morning CVSing! YAY!