Stretching the dollar

I can't go into too much detail about bargain shopping, because there's so much information, but I've received so many questions I thought I could give some folks a starting point. Bargain shopping for household stuff comes easy. Bargain shopping for food - healthy food - takes more effort. In addition to my regular coupons through the Sunday paper and online, I depend on my coupons that Kroger sends me in the mail. I've come to find out that not everyone gets these coupons as often as I do, which is about once a month in the mail. I get the regular $ off a particular item, but also $ off any produce, fruits, meats, etc. So the only thing I can come up with is that after you spend a certain amount of money at Krogers they up the coupon mailouts.

Here's what I bought on my last grocery trip:
8 boxes cereal, 2 gallons milk, eggs, bread, large veggie tray, apples, grapes, bannanas, 2 boxes frozen veggies, many canned veggies, 5 cans tomato sauce, 2 jugs juicy juice, 2 8-packs box juicy juice, 2 jugs minute maid oj, 2 packs chicken breast, 4-pack mixed fruit cups, 4 pack dannon yogurt, fruit snacks, 2 tubs wipes, bag of pullups, 3 big bags rice, 2 small flavored rice, box of bisquit, 3 bags salad, cheese sticks, flour, 2 boxes hot pockets, pizza, yogurt, 2 bags totinos pizza rolls, little smokies, no-yolk noodles, 2 glade air freshener, 1 glade refill pack, 2 boxes of some kind of oriental noodles, 2 containers of honey, fibersure, & flour







All came to a grand total of $186. I paid $79.02. Not the best I've done, but not bad. I usually spend less than this on my weekly grocery budget, and I only buy meat when it's on sale. Thanks to my hubby's last hunting season we have a freezer full of fresh, hormone free & very lean buffulo ground meat, steaks, stew & roast meat. Did you know buffalo tastes just like beef without all the fat?

Another plus for shopping at Kroger: each time you spend $100 in groceries you get to buy 25 gallons of gas at 10 cents off a gallon. And the $100 is before coupons. I'm always able to get my gas at a cheaper rate than any gas station or even Sam's.

Some of these bargains I find as I'm shopping through the stores. Some bargains I find when I get the weekly sale paper. Many deals I find on the websites that I have posted on this blog. Most have store specific forums where they talk about what bargains people have found for the week. For instance, if I want to know what good deals are at Target this week, I go to the Target thread. Other people have already done the work of finding the deals for me. Makes it a lot easier because quite frankly many weeks I don't have the time to figure out what deals are where. That's how I got started, just by reading the web sites, and with lots of advice from the coupon queen bee - Kelly V.

I've been able to narrow my deal shopping to 3 preffered stores: Kroger, Target, and CVS. Every now and then I'll go to Walgreens when they have a particular deal I'm interested in, like when I received $200 in spa rewards money for spending $10 in medicine.

My mom and I got 1 hour massages for free at Riviera, with $50 to spare. I think I'll use that towards a facial....

See, coupon shopping has more perks than you thought.