michellephilippi.com

Happy Weekend to ya!  I usually do my couponing posts on Sundays but I have had several – seriously, people care about this stuff! – several inquiries as to where the heck the coupon posts went.  Well, since I was out of commission for 7 weeks with the ol’ knee surgery, I wasn’t couponing much.  And it broke my heart, for real 🙁  Couponing is like crack to me *giggles*  But I did get out a little bit, and sent my husband on some runs too, so we’ve got some goodness to share with you today.  Albertsons is hot hot hot this week with doublers starting tomorrow and I’ve got a military operation all mapped out for the four of us to hit the store bright and early.  I even called and special ordered some things to make sure I would get them.  This week is that hot.  But anyway, back to the return of Adventures in Couponing – yay!

We’ll start with a bunch of Albertsons goodness from the last couple rounds of doublers.  All detergent – I am brand loyal and use the free & clear variety for the kiddies.  It was on sale for $2.99 which is a good price for detergent.  But I doubled $1-off coupons and got these for 99-cents each.

Act II popcorn was on sale for $1 each and I had coupons for $1 off of 2 which I doubled and got these for free.  This particular variety of Crest was on sale for $2 and there was a $2-off coupon in the P&G coupon insert so I got these totally free with no fancy doubling or store promo.

This was all free.  But the funny thing is, it wasn’t supposed to be. 
So I went to this cashier who always has the deer-in-the-headlights look when he sees a couponer coming.  The soy sauce coupon was for $1 off.  The price of the soy sauce was $1.59.  He was supposed to double to 59-cents and not $1 because that would give me overage which Albertsons does not do.  I tried to tell him this but he wouldn’t listen to me.  So what happened was the overage from the soy sauce went towards the small amount I was supposed to pay for the apple sauce after doubling the rest of my coupons.  I felt bad, but I tried to tell him…. 
Ah well, Albertsons ain’t gonna go out of business for my 82-cents (I hope).

Healthy Choice soup was on sale for $1, buy 4 and get $1 back. So $3 for 4 cans.  I had coupons for $1 off of 2 which made these 25-cents each.  I like free soup, but 25-cents works for me too.  It gets really cold and snowy here in the ‘ho and soup hits the spot on the weekends.

And this is where it gets good.  Or crazy maybe.  This is where you tell me it’s awesome and then whisper to someone else that I’m a crazy hoarder or something – LOL!  But it’s all good.  So what I am trying to show you here is 150 boxes of Hamburger Helper.  Yes.  One hundred and fifty boxes.  And yes, there is some left in town.  This is from this week’s sale ad still going on.  And Albertsons is well-stocked.  I mean pallets upon pallets at every store.  So the promo is buy 10 boxes at $1 each and get $5 back.  So that makes them 50-cents per box.  I had coupons for 75-cents off 3 and 80-cents off 4 that I used with no doublers.  And here’s why I didn’t wait ’til tomorrow with the doublers:  there was also a General Mills promo going where an additional $2 came back your way after paying and that ends today.  So the first 60 boxes they literally paid me $1.10 to take them.  Thanks, Albertsons and General Mills!  I had some more coupons left, called the grocery manager yesterday and asked how they were doing on stock and he said to come on down.  So we got another 90 boxes which I paid something like 8-cents each for.  Now, before you start preaching at me, know a couple of things.  Every 10 boxes produced a voucher for 35 Box Tops for the kids’ school which = 525 Box Tops.  There are also Box Tops on each box to take as well.  And, the ones that are nicely packed up in cases will be going to the church food pantry and also for the kids to take to school for their food drive in November.  Still think I’m nuts?  Maybe just a lil’ 🙂

Made a quick trip to the Walmart because a lot of the “on any” coupons are good for the trial size stuff.  They were wiped out, but I’mma try again tomorrow.  {If I’m saying “the Walmart”, it’s only natural to say “I’mma” – ha!}  But I did have these coupons for $1-off Nexcare bandages.  These boxes were 97-cents each.  All free.  Some for the house, some for the trailer, and some for the school nurse.

Walgreens this week.  Oh yeah.  Walgreens couponing takes some planning and some math and a lot of patience.  Because you buy this, you get a Register Reward back but you can’t use it on the same item so you have to do a lot of back and forth transactions buying one thing to pay for the next and repeat…a lot.  The cool thing was that they had a promo on the deodorant that looked like this:

Buy 4 Travel Size Degree Deodorant .99 each = $3.96
Use (4) .75/1 Any Degree Deodorant from the 7-31-11 Red Plum coupon insert
= .96; get back a $4 RR = $3.04 Money Maker!
So by doing this twice, I made $6.08.

These little deodorants are great for taking on vacation or in the trailer.  And this is why I tell you to look at the coupons that say “on any” and head over to the trial/travel size section.  With the overage from there, and the Register Rewards combined with coupons for everything else, I was able to get (4) bags of Dove Promises, (8) packages of Expo markers, (4) boxes of Crayola crayons, (2) boxes of pencils, and the (8) deodorants for 22-cents.  All of this for 22-cents.  Party on!

For you Albertsons shoppers out there, know that they are changing things up a lot lately.   They switched from 3 doublers per ad to 2 and now I hear they are back to 3.  And, they stopped handing out doublers in the store.  The only place you can get them is in the newspaper.  So I have ordered 9 additional newspapers on Sundays so that I get 10 delivered to me every week.  That’s 10 sets of coupons and 10 sets of doublers when they come out.  Most local newspapers have a coupon special of some sort and trust me, the amount you pay to get these papers, you make that back probably 10 times over your first trip alone.  And and and – we drop off the additional 9 newspapers (without the coupons ;)) to the old folk’s home on the way home from couponing on Sunday!  An additional act of charity to share and teach the kiddies.

So what about you?  Got any hot deals to share with me?  I love hearing about freebage or cheapness 😉