Thursday, February 12, 2009

Grocery shopping

In the Chicago area, there are no grocery stores that double coupons. However, by using coupons on sale items, you can cut your grocery bill in half. With a little effort and thought put into your weekly grocery run, it is easy to save 50% or more at major chain grocery stores.

Behold: last week's trip to Jewel.




The total was $32.95 for all this, with a savings of $39.69. I saved more than I spent--nice! Highlights include 12 Healthy Choice entrees for $10.00, and clearanced Swiss Miss. The flavor is chocolate with added caffeine--as much as a cup of coffee! Because that's totally what I need right now: more caffeine! The most expensive things I bought were the boxes of cookies: they averaged out to $1.19 each.

Ignore the mini-pyramid of Hamburger Helper. We don't eat that in my House of Martha. Clearly, it must be for someone else. I put it in my pantry for safekeeping.


Today's trip to Dominick's was similar. I spent $42.10 with a savings of $59.25.


Nearly every item was on sale, and I had a coupon for almost everything. Highlights for this trip were the Mini Wheats and eggs. The cereal was on super sale (with Dominick's coupon) at 4 for $6.00. I had 4 $1.00 off coupons, making them $0.50 each. Then, at the Kellogg's cereal endcap, they had coupons for a free dozen eggs with every 2 boxes of Kellogg's cereal purchased. The eggs were free--so watch for those coupons on the endcap! And don't be alarmed: the item on top of the Oreos is an avocado. Yum!
Sadly, I did miss out on $3.00 of savings. I don't know if I grabbed the wrong Hormel pork loin, or if the super coupon had a limit of one, but I didn't notice until I got home. Sigh. I suppose that's what happens when your shopping cart has a semi-cranky one-year-old in the front basket.
Grocery shoppers in the Chicago suburbs, take note: Jewel and Dominick's both take internet printable coupons and expired coupons. I've never had a problem at either store with this. Today, the only coupon problem I had was for the Kellogg's cereal: coupon 3 and 4 beeped, saying I hadn't bought 3 and 4 boxes of cereal. Clearly I had, so the cashier overrode the coupons. Which were both printed from coupons.com and expired. Woohoo!

2 comments:

Sarah Eliza @ devastateboredom said...

Nicely done! It's so addictive to save more than you spend... it's gotten to where if I spend $14 and save $12 I feel mildly disappointed in myself, lol. It takes a lot of organization to pull off big shopping trips like that though, so I'm especially impressed that you managed it with a little one.

hehehehe I love that you bought the Swiss Miss with caffeine... It was the topic of my very first (very goofy) blog post! :P
http://devastateboredom.blogspot.com/2009/01/gettin-that-morning-buzz.html You'll have to tell me your opinion of it... to be perfectly honest, it's grown on me a lot and I bought another box just last weekend (half off! Couldn't find a coupon for it though... did you?).

Chicagolandia said...

I love those savings! If you ever have a chance to scroll through the wine, look for the winetags. I've got a small stack of them, and I'm going out hunting next week for more!
And thanks for the heads up about the expireds - I have tons of good ones that expired at the end of last year!