Coupon Victory!

I started using coupons a couple of years ago because of the show Extreme Couponers. I saw it on TLC and was inspired. I had never used a coupon before. I hadn't seen my family ever use coupons. I didn't know the first thing about it!

But I got out my notebook and I took notes while I watched the show.

I can't do the crazy shopping trips they do with getting $600 of groceries for pennies or free. But I do have some great moments with coupons.

I started out by subscribing to The Grocery Game because she does a lot of the work for you. You just need to get a source of coupons (subscribing to the Sunday paper usually costs $1-2 a week and pays for itself). The Grocery Game costs money but also usually pays for itself. I used that as training wheels until I was ready to do it on my own.

This week I scored a couple of great deals and I wanted to share my excitement with you!

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At my Weis store I saw Mucinex Allergy medication in the clearance rack. My husband takes allergy medicine every day and Mucinex is a brand he likes. Allergy medicine is super expensive so I knew I wanted those but I wondered if I could get them even cheaper.

I went home and googled for recent Muscinex coupon and found one for $2.00 off any one product through their Facebook page. We each have a Facebook account so I printed it twice.

Even though I only had coupons for two of them I still bought all the packages they had, which was six. Each box had ten pills in it, so this was 60 allergy pills.

The original regular cost would have been $68.94 (and my coworker who was ringing me up was shocked that I would spend so much on allergy medicine!)

As soon as my card was scanned the price dropped to the clearance price. Then I added my coupons and the end result was a cost of $30.47 for all six boxes. That made them $5 per box (usually $11.49) and just 50 cents per pill.

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On top of that I also needed some hair dye. I went gray at 20 and I dye my hair back to its original black. I don't do it too often but it's looking really bad right now! 

I got a paper coupon for $2.00 off a Clariol hair dye product and I went ahead and loaded an identical coupon onto my Weis card at the ecoupon center. I wasn't sure if these coupons would stack but I thought it was worth a try.

They did and I bought a box that was also on sale. So I got a $7.49 box of hair dye for $2.99 

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Next I took advantage of a Big G cereal sale. I can't eat my beloved Lucky Charms anymore because that's a lot of both white sugar and simple carbs. But my husband can eat them.

There was a special at Weis for an instant $6 off 4 boxes of Big G cereal. 

I downloaded a coupon from MyPoints.com for 50 cents off a box of Lucky Charms. It doubled at the register to a dollar and I'll get 20 points (usually ten but there's a special) to my My Points account that I can later cash out.

Then there's also a SavingStar.com coupon for 50 cents back on a box of Lucky Charms (I've found that when one site has a coupon for a product, most of the other sites have it too).

So we got 4 boxes of Lucky Charms that are usually $3.99 each and got $7.50 back. So $15.96 minus $7.50 is $8.46 for all four and that makes them $2.11 per box. (I usually try to get cereal under $2 before I buy it but this was not bad).

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The last thing was Dole frozen treats. They've got frozen chocolate covered fruit and smoothie fruit mixes. They were on special at Weis for $5 off instantly when you bought $20 worth. 

At SavingStar they had save $4 when you spend $12. 

So we bought $23 worth and got $9 back.