Shaw's 2/17-2/23

I am afraid it is taking me longer to find the time to do these posts as my daughter's pending wedding moves closer and closer. I did find time to get my weekly shopping done at both Shaw's Supermarkets and Rite Aid. There were some pretty good deals at Shaw's this week. I hadn't time to sort and file all my coupons collected, so I took advantage of a couple of the deals while I was already out and in the are. I will make a return run when I go to Bangor this week for work.

All told, I purchased 10 boxes GM cereal, 20 boxes of various Hamburger/Chicken helper meals, 9 Hershey bars, 2lb strawberries all for $35.00. The bill rang up to just over $95 before sales and coupons. These are some of the deals with their coupon match ups (if they apply) that I was excited over. Enjoy!

There was no coupon match up for this, but I just bought 2 lbs of strawberries at Sam's club this week for more nearly $5/2LBS. This is a better deal. Also, you CAN freeze strawberries to use for shortcakes, mixed drinks, etc. I would not recommend trying to eat them raw again after freezing because of their consistancy.

There are $1/8 and $1/10 coupons available for this deal. Using it bring them to .50¢/cup AND you get a catalina for 1 FREE 4pk when you buy 10. Note: Cherie, did you get your catalina for this at the register?

Use $1/2 coupon from 1/8 SS2 to make buying the Barilla pasta .50¢/box when you buy 2 boxes. The coupon is for the whole grain variety. 

There are MANY various Hamburger Helper coupons available right now. I used (1) .90/4 printable coupon and (4) .80/4 printable coupons for my trip. That made them .54¢-.59¢/box. You can also use the $1/4 coupons from 1/8 or 2/5 GM inserts. Some markets have .75/3 in that insert- we didn't. printable from Coupons.com page 4 Zip 30062 I like these because the kids will eat them without a fuss and on nights when we have someone over unexpectedly, they feed a lot of people quickly. I "doctor" mine up by adding chopped onions, bell peppers, and topping it with additional parmesan cheese on the "Italian or cheese" varieties that use hamburger. I was interested to see a couple of new chicken varieties; lemon pepper and a spicy honey-mustard based chicken dish. I haven't tried them yet, but am looking forward to it.

You need to buy a total of 10 items to get the price. You can mix and match. And, you earn Box Tops!

Totinos Pizza Rolls- use $1/2 from 1/29 SS insert= .49¢/box

Betty Crocker Cake/Frosting- use $1/when you buy both from 1/22 SS insert= $1.49/both

GM Cheerio Cereals- use $1/3 from 1/2 SS or 2/5 GM= $1.16/box Use Printable Coupons HERE These are for .75/1 box on the Multi Grain Peanut butter and Dulce de Leche flavors. If your store has these as part of the sale (and I have read that they are), they will be free when the coupon doubles.

Have a great day!

Sonja ♥

Shaw's + General Mills Products= HUGE SAVINGS

Shopping at Shaw's today was AWESOME. I will admit, there is a little bit of an adrenaline rush when I am in line, waiting to see if everything is going to work out the way I planned it. I needed to make some minor alterations at the store to compensate for some coupon match ups and that only added to my state of excited nervousness. I came within $5 of what I intended to spend. Success!!!Total Retail for my purchases $139.05. My out of pocket expense was $ 38.03 AND I earned a $10 On Your Next Order (oyno) coupon, which made my net transaction $28.03. Total Savings 79%.
The sale Shaw's advertised was save $10 On Your Next Order when you buy $25 in participating General Mills products. The $25 mark is triggered before you apply coupons, so you don't actually spend $25 in cash monies to qualify for the $10 catalina. As usual, I wanted to spend as little out of my pocket as possible, so I broke up my purchases into 3 transactions.
Transaction #1:

The differences in the amount I paid and the sale amount reflect the additional savings I enjoyed from the coupons I used. Shaw's only allows "4 like" coupons for each transaction, so that was another factor in my transaction groupings. I used both online coupons and Sunday paper insert coupons in various amounts, which is why on one graph, it will show more money for the same product than on another graph.

Transaction #2:

The out of pocket amount is the cost after all my coupons were applied and before the additional $10 OYNO catalina. After earning the first $10 OYNO in transaction #1, I used it to pay down my out of pocket balance in transaction #2. And, since it only matters that the total before coupons reached $25, I earned another $10 OYNO catalina. In all, I earned three of them, but rolled them on each subsequent transaction. If I had purchased everything in one transaction, I would have paid $58.03 out of pocket and earned (3) $10 catalinas. The final net amount of $28.03 would be the same, but by employing multiple transactions, I used catalina money to pay and kept my money in the bank where it does my family greater good.

Transaction #3:

I am quite pleased with my results, but I have more coupons which correspond to this sale, so I will probably plan to revisit Shaw's when I am in Bangor again later this week. I am very visual, so I brought home the flyer to look through, mark up, and devise possibly a better deal than today's. The internet is full of sites that give you sneak peaks at ad scans for upcoming sale weeks. For this week's sale the most helpful one for me was from Money Saving Maine-iac's blog which You Can Read Here. Oh! And, purchasing 5 GM Cereals together in my final transaction (not 4) triggered a $2/5 any GM cereal catalina.

The other cool things about this sale is that all the items I purchased had a General Mills "box top for education" label, which are worth .10 cents each (today's total was $5.30) AND because I purchased more than ten qualifying items in each transaction, it triggered (3) 10 Bonus box tops codes worth an additional $3.00 That means, Searsport Middle School's parent/teacher group just got $8.30 richer just by my buying my family's groceries today.

At the end of today's trip, I had purchased: 15 boxes Totino's Pizza Rolls, 6 bags Betty Crocker Cookie Mixes, 6 boxes GM Cereals, 16 boxes Betty Crocker Potatoes, 8 bags Chex Mix, and 4 bags of Bugles... all for less than $30.00.

Sonja ♥