Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Frugal Workshop readers today. I hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday and that your blessings will be "pressed down, shaken together, and running over". 

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
Professor Penny Pincher © Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011 and beyond.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”
"Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle ~ It will help you save money"

Weekend Edition

I worked everyday except for Monday this week. Next week we will have the entire week off for Thanksgiving break, which will be a bittersweet holiday this year as we have plans to lay my FIL to rest Sunday afternoon. 

Today we took the garbage off and headed to town to shop for some grocery store deals. Our first stop was Target where we picked up Special K cereal bars, Clorox wipes, Olay makeup remover pads, and Cover Girl nail polish (the last three items being my daughter's deals). 

As usual, we used the Couponaholic website to find out about the good deals this week. I went for the Special K bars. They were on sale for $2.50 each and when you bought four boxes, Target gave a $5 gift card. I bought 12 boxes and had coupons for $12 off (12 - $1 off coupons), and earned $10 in gift cards, so each box ended up costing 66¢ each. 

Totals for Target:

Retail Value: $77.72
Paid out of Pocket: $21.41
Savings: 73%

Afterwards we went to Publix for some awesome buy one get one free deals.  Even though we went for coupon deals, some of their weekly deals were so good I bought them without coupons. 

Our savings are a combination of manufacturer coupons and store coupons, and buy one get one free deals. We also used a deal where if we bought $50 worth of groceries, we earned a $10 gift card. It was a Target deal, but we were able to use it at Publix. 

Some of the deals we plan don't always work out, and we simply decide at the time if the price is right, there were a couple of deals today that didn't pan out, so we didn't take advantage of all the deals we had planned. 

Here is a list of what we picked up at Publix today:

(not everything is in the picture)

2 bags of flour (b1g1f sale, $1.50 each)
4 cans of Del Monte corn (25¢ each, b1g1f sale, store & manf. coupon)
4 pounds of butter (b1g1f sale, $2.15 a pound )
7 containers of Hummus (sale + $1.00 store & manf. coupon = free)
4 containers of sour cream (b1g1f deal, $1.06 each)
4 containers of Dannon creamery desserts (manf. coupon)
6 boxes of Orville Redenbacher popcorn (manf. coupon = free)
2 spray bottles of Pam (b1g1f deal)
1 box clementines
1 half gallon of Silk almond milk (free with coupon)
1 jar Vlasic garden style pickles (combined manf. & store coupon, 79¢)
1 jar Barilla pasta sauce (combined manf. & store coupon)
4 cans Hormel chili (manf. coupon, 58¢ each)
6 boxes Ritz Cracker (manf. coupon & big1f sale, 88¢ each)
6 Sargento Tasting Cheese (store coupons, $1.11 each)
6 Eckrich Smoked Sausage (sale + 6 - $1.50 off coupons, $1.50 each)
2 Carmex lip balm (manf. coupon, 40¢ each)
2 Hellmann's mayo (b1g1f sale + store coupon, $1.50 each)
12 Lipton boxes of tea (manf. coupons made them .29¢ each)
2 cans Carnation milk (sale + manf. coupon made them 20¢ each)

Totals for Publix:

The retail value of our items at Publix was $256.22 and our out of pocket expense was $76.64, a savings of 70%.

So far this month, I've spent a total of $191.08 on groceries. 

I'm doing much better than I was last month. 

How are you doing on your grocery shopping?

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
Professor Penny Pincher
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011 and beyond.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”
"Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle ~ It will help you save money"

Life...

Sorry I've not posted this week, but we've had a lot going on the last two weeks. 

My daughter's grandfather passed away this week. He was my (former) father in law, but always treated me like his daughter even after the divorce. He was generous to a fault, never failed to see us when he came to town, and I never heard him say a negative thing about anyone in all the years that I knew him. His passing, along with some other things, has left me with a sadness I've not been able to shake. 

I was all set to work five days this week, but the roof is being replaced at school, and since it is an older building there were several safety issues, so they ended up cancelling school on Friday to do some safety checks. Everything checked out OK, so we will be back in school on Monday. 

My daughter and I went to town today and after her volunteer duties, we went grocery shopping to get in on some good coupon deals. 

Pictured above are 12 boxes of pasta, 1 bottle of ginger ale, 2 bottles of V-8, 18 bottles of Lipton tea, 12 cans of Progresso soup, 4 canisters of Quaker oatmeal and 8 bottles of Pom juice. The retail value of all of the items on sale was $99.51 and we paid a total of $10.21. 

Everything but the Pom juice came from Publix and we used a combination of coupons we printed online at Couponaholic, from the Sunday paper, the Publix advantage flyer, and buy one get one free sales, which can be a powerful combination as you can see.  

Look what we scored last week:

We bought 10 Sunny Delights for 64¢ each using Smart Source 

coupons combined with a Publix buy one get one free sale. 


Sorry this post is not more than it is, but it's about all I can muster for 

the time being. 


I hope you all are having a great, frugal weekend. :)



Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
Professor Penny Pincher 
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011 and beyond.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”
"Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle ~ It will help you save money"

Early in the Week

I can't remember if I mentioned the fact that we have Monday & Tuesday off this week. My daughter and I have been doing laundry and cleaning all weekend, so we could enjoy our two days off this week. We finally got all the chairs and brooms from the drying racks put back where they go, which made the house look better almost instantly. And we are finally caught up on the laundry. Yay! :)

I've been working in the kitchen, cleaning and putting things away. I boiled two dozen eggs today for egg salad and lunches for this week. I am so tired of sandwiches in my lunch, so boiled eggs will be better. I'll add some cheese too. 

Dinner today is Pedernales Potatoes, Carrots, Green Beans with Onions, and Sweet Iced Tea. 

On Tuesday we ran some errands. One place we stopped was Bi-Lo because I had some coupons I wanted to use with their three day sale. 

My favorite coupon site nowadays is Couponaholic. 

Couponaholic

I don't even use the Sunday coupons anymore. I let my daughter deal with them because she enjoys it so much. I look at Couponaholic every now and then to see if there are any good deals. The 55¢ off coupon for Skippy peanut butter was a good deal.  I printed two coupons off my computer and my daughter printed four coupons and she also had an additional six $1.00 off coupons from the Sunday paper for one jar of Skippy. 

The peanut butter was on "sale" at Bi-Lo for $3.12, but it was buy one get one free, which made each jar $1.56. The 55¢ coupons doubled and so our total coupons took off $12.60, which made each jar only 51¢.   This was a really good deal. 

The also had Pillsbury cake mixes on sale for buy one get one free. We had 35¢ off coupons that doubled, so each box end up costing 44¢ each, which was another good deal. 

We did buy a few other things like margarine, crackers, preserves, and olives. 

We also got hair cuts today. I saved a receipt from Walmart for $9.99 haircuts and used them at Great Clips today. Haircuts for both of us came to $19.98 plus tip, which saved us $6.00 off the Great Clips price. 

I also filled up the car today using my Bi-Lo bonuscard fuel perks and paid $2.44 per gallon. It only cost me $21 to fill up today. I should be dancing in the street at the savings. LOL :)

Back to work and school tomorrow. I hope you all have a great week!

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
Professor Penny Pincher 
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011 and beyond.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”
"Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle ~ It will help you save money"

The Wait is Over...

We have a new dryer!

We tried to buy the dryer I mentioned from Home Depot, but they wouldn't deliver, so we ended up buying a dryer from Lowe's yesterday for $299 and they delivered it this morning. It is a little bit bigger than our other dryer was and it looks great. We are just thrilled to be back in business with the laundry and have plans to get caught up on it this weekend. 

Today is my daughter's day to volunteer at the library, so we left the house early, took the garbage with us and dropped it off along the way and I made stops at Bi-Lo, Publix, Dollar Tree, and United Grocery Outlet. 

At Bi-Lo, they had Stayfree pads on sale, priced at 2 for $6.00, a real bargain since I normally pay $4.97 for them at Walmart.  Lucky me, I also had three $1.00 off coupons, so I paid $2.00 each for them. What a bargain! I now have 10 of these in my stash, which is about a ten month supply for me. 

We picked up seven bottles of Pom juice for free at Bi-Lo too. They had them on sale priced at $1.00 each and we had seven 50¢ off coupons, which doubled, so all of these were free.  

I also picked up this 12 pack of Fanta strawberry drinks for free using the coupon above I received for free from My Coke Rewards. 

At Publix, they had Mueller's pasta on sale for buy one get one free, which was not a good deal without coupons, but I had two 75¢ off coupons, so I picked up two packages of spaghetti for 25¢ each! Another good bargain today.  

I also stopped in at the Dollar Tree to buy a loaf of Nature's Own bread and a loaf of Wonder bread and since I had a 55¢ off coupon for both, these were only 45¢ each.

At United Grocery Outlet, they had a Saturday only special. Green Beans for 39¢ a can and Mandarin Oranges for 40¢ a can. I picked up 20 cans of Green Beans and 20 cans of Mandarin Oranges, all for $15.80 plus tax. Forty cans of food for $15.80 was a great bargain and is a good example of how the Pantry Principle works. :)

Free this Week 

Three samples of Juicy Fruit.

A very nice five pack sample of Nestle Quick. 

I certainly didn't spend a lot today, unless you count the dryer, but I came home with a lot of food for the money I spent. $17.19 for 20 cans of mandarin oranges, 20 cans of green beans, 2 loaves of bread, 7 bottles of Pom juice, one 12 pack of pop, and 2 boxes of spaghetti. The best part is we had fun in the process. 

How was your Saturday?

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
Professor Penny Pincher
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011 and beyond.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”
"Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle ~ It will help you save money"