Because of Winn Dixie

Day 4

Today I went on my first semi planned big shop.  I started out with circulars and lists of several things I needed from 3 major retailers. See the pictures below for my various lists.

 

 

 

I started out making one list.

 

Then another list...

 

 

Then after about 30 minutes of trying to sort out where I could score the best deals on the most items, I decided to STOP.

I am shopping with an infant. I can’t go to 3 stores. So my best bet (I decided) was to go to the store that had the best sales on the items I need right now. Regardless of what coupons I had clipped.

So I headed out to Winn Dixie with my little red coupon file. I chose Winn Dixie because they had several Buy One Get One (BOGO) offers and 10 for 10 offers on meats, dairy, and pasta, and right now, those were the things I need most. My strategy was simple: get things I need and use the coupons I had only when they would result in better savings than the other options present.

I spent an hour and a half (which is only about 30 minutes longer than I usually take in a shop this big) and used 4 coupons for the following items:

1 box pasta

1 jar jam

2 V8 Bottles

1 bag frozen chicken nuggets

The items I bought with coupons

 

I bought several BOGO items, including:

Pork Ribs- with all of the meats/chicken/fish, I made sure to get packages of equal or near equal weight, this way I really got as much as possible with the BOGO deal.

Chicken Thighs

Cod Fillets

Shrimp

Steaks

Bread Crumbs

Orange Juice

Toddler Juice

And Several 10 for $10 Items

Pasta Boxes

Pasta Sauce (I have never purchased pasta sauce in a can before, but I figured, why not try it?)

Some Items that were on sale were:

Peanut Butter

Jelly (and I had a coupon)

V8 (and I had a coupon)

Toilet paper

Eggs

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All together I purchased 37 items and spent $92.88.

I saved $51.93 with my rewards card and $3.05 more with coupons for a total of $54.98 saved. In addition, I earned .10 in fuel perks that I can use to get .10 off per gallon of fuel (for my 10 gallon car= savings of $1).

The items purchased today.

 

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I was not impressed with this haul. Mostly because I wanted to use more coupons. The problem I kept running into with the coupons were as follows:

1- The coupon did not bring the price down as low as the store brand option

2- The coupon was valid for a certain size that the store did not carry

3- The coupon did not work with sale items. For example, there was a great sale on Post cereals, but I only had coupons for Kellogg’s cereals. So either way, I was saving money, but I could not seem to get that perfect alignment where the sale matched up with my coupon. I suppose this is why avid couponers have binders and binders of coupons.

4- The coupon could have been maximized if the smaller size was available but then the savings were not deep enough on the larger available sizes.

5- The coupon was from another store.

 

But when I stopped to reflect on my trip, I realized that it was not a waste of time. I purchased many high priced items on this trip- Enough for many meals. If you take $93 I spent and divide by the number of items I purchased, I spent about $2.51 per item, and I would venture to say that most if not all of my items retail for more than that.

So I may be inching my way towards deep savings, but I am saving. And I have a little stockpile going.

I will remain cautiously optimistic.

SAVINGS TO DATE:  $ 68.83   ($12.85 last count + 54.98 saved in sales and coupons + $1 for fuel perks)

 TIME SPENT TODAY:  1 hour  (30 minutes preparing (and then not using the prep sheets) and 30 extra minutes spent at the store)