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Saturday, April 9, 2011

How many cereals can one family eat????

I wonder what is excessive when it comes to staples, like cereal, fresh fruit, milk, etc. These things may or may not be considered "staples" in your family as they are not all non perishable. But, when I think of "staple" items for our home, I think of those things which we use so frequently that is makes sense to me to buy them in a larger quantity when I find them on sale. Tonight, Sean and I wanted to take advantage- for the last time this cycle- of the catalinas printing for FREE Milk. Living in Maine, the dairy laws are so strict that these don't come around all that often.
$1.59 Total Cost

We chanced into a better deal than we had planned, (though Sean will tell you that we did not do as well as we could have since I was loathe to return cereals in our first transaction when all the catalinas we were expecting for them failed to print.) The unexpected surprise we found were; peelies for $1.00 off ANY fresh fruit purchase when you buy two qualifying boxes of kellogg's cereal on the boxes. So we walked to the produce section and bagged up some fruit. I hadn't planned on buying fruit and didn't want to add to what I had planned on spending. So, I considered the price per pound of the fruits and bagged just over the weight I needed to achieve the $1.00 mark. Here's what we did:

Transaction 1:
3 Boxes Kellogg's Frosted Flakes $2.50 ea
3 Boxes Kellogg's Raisin Bran $2.50 ea
1 Box Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats $2.50
2 pounds bananas $1.24
1 lemon .49 cents
1 lime .69 cents
2 granny smith apples $1.24
Total before coupons= $21.16

I used these coupons:
(3) $1/1 fresh fruit peelie coupons,
(3) $1/2 Any Kellogg's cereal mfr coupons,
(1) .70/1 Kellogg's cereal mfr coupon,
(1) $1/1 catalina from my Hannaford's Rewards Card

Which made my balance $13.46 less the $3.59 catalina for milk= net transaction of $9.87 for 7 boxes of cereal, 3 pounds of fresh fruit, and 1 gallon of milk.

We were expecting 3 Free milk catalina's to print, but only one did. Since the expiration date for the free milk was April 23, 2011 and we had many more coupons to use, AND we were scoring free fruit, too, we decided it was worth it to us to make four more transactions.

Transaction 2:
3 Boxes Kellogg's cereal $7.50
1 Lime .69 cents
1 Lemon .49 cents
Total $8.68
Less (1) $1/2 Kellogg's cereals, (1) .70/1 Kellogg's cereals, (1) $1/1 Fresh Fruit= $5.98
Less (1) $3.59 Catalina Free Milk= $2.39 Net Transaction

Transaction 3:
3 Boxes Kellogg's cereal $7.50
3 Red Plums $1.21
Total $8.71
Less (1) $1/2 Kellogg's cereals, (1) .70/1 Kellogg's cereals, (1) $1/1 Fresh Fruit= $6.01
Less (1) $3.59 Catalina Free Milk= $2.42 Net Transaction

Transaction 4:
3 Boxes Kellogg's cereal $7.50
2 Granny Smith Apples $1.24
Total $8.74
Less (1) $1/2 Kellogg's cereals, (1) .70/1 Kellogg's cereals,
(1) $1/1 Fresh Fruit= $6.04
Less (1) $3.59 Catalina Free Milk= $2.45 Net Transaction

Transaction 5:
3 Boxes Kellogg's cereal $7.50
2 MacIntosh Apples $1.30
Total $8.80
Less (1) $1/2 Kellogg's cereals, (1) .70/1 Kellogg's cereals, (1) $1/1 Fresh Fruit= $6.10
Less (1) $3.59 Catalina Free Milk= $2.51 Net Transaction

Transaction 6:
1 Gallon Milk $3.94
Less Catalina coupon $3.59
Total due .35 cents


$19.99 for 19 boxes Kellogg's cereals, 7lbs Fresh Fruit, 5 Gal Milk

Total Out of Pocket: $34.35, plus 4 Free milk @ $3.59 still waiting to be used= Net Transaction $19.99.

Happy Shopping!
Sonja ♥

3 comments:

  1. You made my head spin!! LOL

    Great job!

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  2. Oh and are you signed up at Kelloggs.com? they have some really good coupons there as well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Of course I am! LOL My inbox in my email account is mostly coupon sites! I am not sure if that is really sad or really clever. ;)

    ReplyDelete