Cleveland Penny Pincher

Kellogg’s cereal will be on sale at Giant Eagle beginning Thursday. There is no list of cereals being included, but Raisin Bran and Froot Loops are pictured. If Crunchy Nut  cereal is included, you can score 3 boxes for only $0.73 each. Here’s how:

Kellogg’s Cereal (12-23.5 oz)—–3 for $6 (Must buy 3)

• $1/2 Kellogg’s FiberPlus Cereals (Kelloggs.com)
• $0.70/1 Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut™ Cereal  (Coupons.com)
• $0.50/1 Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats Cinnamon Roll Cereal (Kelloggs.com)
• $1/2 Kellogg’s Special K cereals (Kelloggs.com)
• $0.50/1 Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Cereal (Kelloggs.com)
• Buy 3 Crunchy Nut cereals, Use (2) $0.70/1 Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut™ Cereal  (Coupons.com) and (1) $0.50/1 Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Cereal (Kelloggs.com)
• Final Price $0.73 each if Crunchy Nut is included

There have been numerous e-coupon services that have been popping up recently and I am going to start adding these e-coupons to the Giant Eagle matchup each week. This first post is going to discuss Cellfire, an e-coupon clipping service, and frequently asked questions about e-coupons. If there are any questions that you have about Cellfire or e-coupons that are not answered by this post, please leave a comment and I will try and answer your question as best I can.

1. What are e-coupons?

E-coupons are coupons that are loaded onto your store savings card. The savings from e-coupons are automatically deducted from your transaction amount when you buy the participating product. 

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Rite Aid will have Samy products on sale beginning 11/20 for $8.99 each. When you buy one Samy product, you will receive $5 +Up Rewards. The amount of money out of pocket can be reduced even more by using the $2/1 Samy product coupon on the Rite Aid website. This coupon is called an adperk. You can receive an adperk by watching a video. Once you have watched the video the coupon will show up under the rewards tab. The coupon can then be printed right away or saved for a later date.

Samy Fat Hair Shampoo or Stylers or Samy Fat Foam Hair Color—–$8.99

• Buy 1, Receive $5+Up Rewards
• $2/1 Samy product (Riteaid Ad Perk)
• Pay $6.99, Receive $5 +Up Rewards
• Final Price: $1.99 each

This week at Giant Eagle there is a Buy One, Get One Free Deal on Aunt Jemima Waffles. I received many emails from readers wanting to know how we could only buy one package when the deal is buy one, get one free. At Giant Eagle when they say, “Buy one, get one free,” they actually mean that the price of the item is half of what it normally sells for. For this deal if the regular shelf price of Aunt Jemima waffles is $2.50, then each one will ring up at $1.25. There are rare instances where an item will be advertised as buy one, get one free and you actually buy one item at the full price and receive the second one free. I have only ever seen Giant Eagle make a customer buy 1 at full price once and that was for chicken breasts. You can determine the difference between the two different types of sales by reading the fine print on the sale sign and/or in that week’s ads. If you are required to buy two items in order to get the deal, the fine print will say, “Must buy two.”

I hope this post has answered your questions about Giant Eagle’s Buy One, Get One Free Sales. If you have any more questions, feel free to comment on this post or send us an email at sarah@clevelandpennypincher.com.

Today I discovered that dentists’ offices are great places to find coupons. I went in for a normal teeth cleaning and walked out with a bunch of coupons. Just like the pediatrician’s office earlier, I found the coupons in a basket only this time they were in the waiting room. Of course being the couponer that I am, I had to stop and grab one of each of the different coupons so I could let my readers in on my discovery. I have now talked my family into grabbing coupons for me each time they go to the dentist’s office. Dentist’s offices often receive coupons to distribute to their patients from brands like Act and Listerine. These coupons are often never released to the general public except through dentists. Next time you are at the dentist’s office remember to pick up your coupons. Have you found coupons in an odd place? If so, let us know by commenting on this post. Here are the coupons that I found at my local dentist’s office.

Today I discovered that pediatricians’ offices are great places to find coupons. My little brother had been suffering from heat exhaustion so we had to go to see a doctor. As we were leaving I noticed a basket on the receptionist’s desk filled with hundreds of coupons. Of course being the couponer that I am, I had to stop and grab one of each of the different coupons so I could let my readers in on my discovery. I also talked my brothers into grabbing coupons for me each time they went to the doctor so I could post the new ones that I found on here. Pediatricians’ offices often receive coupons to distribute to their patients from brands like Gerber and Triaminic. These coupons are often never released to the general public except through pediatricians. Next time you are at the pediatrician’s office remember to pick up your coupons. Have you found coupons in an odd place? If so, let us know by commenting on this post. Here are the coupons that I found at my local pediatricians’ office.

$126.37—–Merchandise total after tax

$92.34—–Coupons and Store Rewards used in this transaction

$34.03—–Total Paid

73.1% Savings

Here is a summary of my shopping trip today. I hope this will help shed some light on how you can use coupons and store rewards to stock up on not only sale items, but also non-coupon items. The store rewards that I use in the following transactions are ones that I earned previously. You cannot use store rewards that you just earned on the same transaction. I have also calculated the percent savings for each of the transactions to give you a more accurate picture of how much savings you can realistically expect. This savings is based off of the sale price, not the retail value. The percentage would be greater if it were calculated off of the actual retail value. Please let me know if you have any questions about how to use coupons, when, where, why, etc.

CVS: This is the store that I end up with the most amount of store rewards at so I normally have an excess of rewards to use. For this trip I used $8 Extra Bucks that I earned previously and ended up receiving $6 Extra Bucks at the end of the transaction. If you are trying to get the Extra Bucks on the Colgate toothbrushes make sure you have the circular with you because it appears that it is not printing out automatically.

2 Colgate Extra Clean Multipack Manual Toothbrushes (3 pk.)—–$2.99 each

• Buy 1, Receive $2 Extra Bucks, Limit 2
• These were located in the travel section.
  
• The Extra Bucks did not print for some reason so the cashier had to manually print a $4 Extra Bucks since I bought two of them. (more…)

There are three main ways to get multiple copies of coupons: the newspaper, friends/family, and All You magazine.

The main way to get coupons is through the newspaper. Every Sunday when there are coupon inserts, I get four copies of the newspaper. It may seem odd/excessive to get four, but once you are in the habit of getting good deals it becomes commonplace to buy multiple copies. Think back to a time when there was an amazing deal and you only had one coupon for that item. If you are able to find a deal where you can get an item for free or extremely cheap, why buy just one? It helps to have multiple coupons for an item so you can stock up on the sale items when the prices are next to nothing. I have enough deodorant, body wash, razors, and toothpaste to last my fiance and I a year. We won’t have to spend any money from our budget on these items and these items cost us next to nothing. (more…)

Right Guard Deodorant or Body wash, or Dry Ida Deodorant

• Buy 1, Get 1 Free Sale
• Buy One Get One Free Right Guard/Dry Idea Product (RP 5/1/2011) (EXP 5/31/2011)
• Final Price: Free when you buy 2

Just as a side note, since I talked about this situation in regards to Rite Aid a couple of days ago, at Walgreens if an offer says “Spend X amount of money, Receive X amount register rewards,” you must actually spend X amount of money. It is calculated AFTER coupons.

Thank you Budget Savvy Diva!

After posting the Walmart “deals” I realized it is important for me to explain when to use different types of coupons. Most of the deals that I posted for Walmart are not the greatest because most of them use coupons that are 99 cents or less. Here in Northeast Ohio we have Giant Eagle, which will double all coupons up to 99 cents. It is rare for me to use a coupon under a dollar unless I am using it at Giant Eagle. It doesn’t make sense for me to use it anywhere else because I can get a better value off of the same coupon at a store that will double the coupons. With that being said there are some parts of the country that do not double coupons, like California. If you are in an area of the country that does not have a store that doubles coupons, then you should use the coupons under a dollar only when it lowers the price enough to make it a good deal.

Now onto when to use coupons in general…..

One question that I have gotten from people is, “Why don’t you just buy generic and save money that way?” My answer is, “Why buy generic, when I can get name brand products for next to nothing?” The goal of couponing is to save money, but still live the quality of life that you are accustomed to. When you go to the store using coupons, make sure the item that you are buying is cheaper than the generic. If the generic is still cheaper, then the “deal” that you are getting with the coupons is not really a deal. It will take some trial and error before you get to the point where you know which deals are the best for your family and which are not. Start compiling a list of the prices that you are spending on different products. Before long, you will notice when items go on sale and how cheaply you can purchase them.