Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Sane couponing (Part Two)

Where I live, up here in the "land of no doubles" (coupons are not ever doubled) there really isn't any competition between the two grocery stores.  We have a Safeway, a QFC, the Co-op and World Peace Produce.  I shop all of them, usually on Fridays, my errand day.  Food prices are high here.  When we moved up from Portland, I was shocked at the prices and that was 1982.  They certainly haven't gone down any since then.

We get our grocery sale flyers in the mail on Tuesday.  I devour those babies like a Michael Connelly thriller.  It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I realized that they have a lot more savings in them than just what is on sale that week.  For example: about a month ago, the Safeway flyer had a little tiny box that said if you got your shingles vaccine, you could take 10% off your grocery bill.  I've been trying for a year to get that vaccine.  Then, there was a little nondescript box that said if you bought a $50 ITunes card, you would get a coupon for $10 off your next shopping trip.  Well, you know how much Miss MoneyPenny loves her IPod and those cards never go on sale, so I scooped one up.  I'm not done yet.  I also noticed that they had a good sale on New York steaks and it is barbecue time.  Guess what?  There was a little tiny Safeway coupon that said "buy $20 worth of steak and get $4 off" so I picked up a family pack of five for $21 and paid $16 for really good steak.

That was a really good shopping day, wouldn't you say?  And, my insurance paid 100% on the vaccine.  I'm going to give you another example:  I think it was in April when the QFC ad had these strange looking coupons.  They were larger and were blue, as I remember them, and they ran for about a month. They were never in the same place, week to week.  The deal was, save $5 on $25 worth of groceries, save $10 on $50 and $15 on $75.  Free money, for nothin'!  The checkers told me that they had to tell people about them!  Hardly anyone had noticed.

I'm not saying that it is like that every week, but it is certainly worth checking out.  This week the Safeway ad is a bust as far as I'm concerned but I will be visiting QFC.  For those people that commute across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, there is a coupon for $5 off $50, if you buy your "Good to Go" pass at QFC.  They also have a coupon for transferring a prescription.  I worked this once and got a $25 credit on my QFC account. 

As far as deals go this week, I'm looking at the fresh salmon for $7.99/lb, personal sized watermelon at 2/$5, and the 2 pound container of fresh blueberries for $4.99.  I'll drop by World Peace for veggies.  I keep a full pantry and freezer so I just cherry-pick the deals.  It took some time to get to this point.  I started by stocking up on one or two items a week.  I looked for things that I always use that were on sale, and that I had coupons for, so that they were at rock bottom price.  It took me about six months before I was at the cherry-picking stage.  What I'm trying to do here is - never pay full price, if I can help it, and that is what I want for you, too.  We work too hard for our money to just lay it down without being smart about how we spend it, don't you agree?

1 comment:

  1. Really? I've always thought of those as the worst kind of junk mail, and just tossed them onto the newspaper stack. I'll have to start looking at them.

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