Here is my belated “Super Savings Saturday” post! I came down with a flu over the weekend, so I’m a little behind on getting my deals posted.

First stop, Safeway:

Total spent: Zero
Total before coupons: $6.00

View receipt #1
View Receipt #2

Got:

6 boxes of napkins

These were on sale for $1, and there were coupons for .50/1 in the 6/22 newspaper inserts – free after doubles! Unfortunately, these coupons expired on the 12th, but there seem to be Dixie coupons in the inserts frequently, and I see these on sale for $1 at Safeway often; so keep your eyes peeled for this one in the future.

Then, it was off to Walgreens:

Total spent: Nothing out of pocket, put $1.95 on a rebate gift card. And I got back $3 in Register Rewards!
Total before coupons: $13.99

View receipts – one of my items rang up wrong initially, so the first receipt is what I overpaid, and the second receipt is the refund back to my gift card.

Got:

1 Glade Flameless Candle – used a $5/1 coupon from the 9/7 newspaper inserts, and got a$3 Register Reward back for purchasing it.
2 bottles of Coffee-Mate – On sale for $1.50 each, and I used two $1/1 printables. You are allowed to print two coupons per computer, so I used my boyfriend’s computer to print these.
1 pez dispenser – fun stocking stuffer!
1 Lindt chocolate bars – These are on sale for $2.29 at my store. I used one .75/1 coupon and one “Buy One, Get One Free” coupon from the 10/5 inserts, and stacked them with a $1 coupon from the EasySaver catalog. This resulted in .46 cents of overage for purchasing 2 bars! Overage from chocolate – does it get any better than that?

I got last month’s rebate loaded onto my gift card, so I put it to good use during this trip. Remember how I spent $32.72 out of pocket for rebate items last month? Well, I got $42.60 back in rebates!

As a side note, you’ll notice that there is an item voided off my order. I had originally planned to buy one trial sized packet of Airborne for .99 cents, and use a $2 off coupon. However, the coupon would not go through automatically, and the manager said he could not accept it. The coupon was valid, because it says $2 off any variety of Airborne. The manufacturer reimburses the store for the full amount of the coupon, plus a handling fee. But the manager seemed to be confused about coupon redemption, as he said several different contradictory things regarding the redemption, and has been misinformed in the past also. This was the same manager from the last time I tried to redeem this coupon, and the register processed the coupon differently that time. But that’s OK; I just voided the Airborne off my order. Incidentally, my total was $1 higher than I had intended as a result, since I didn’t have the extra overage.

Then I stopped by Fred Meyer’s:

Total spent: Nothing out of pocket, put .20 cents on a gift card I got for my birthday
Total before coupons: $21.70

View receipt

Got:

Over a pound of organic bananas
10 Dove deodorants – on sale for $1.99, and there was a stack of $2/1 Dove deodorant coupons right next to it on the shelf!
1 trial sized Zantac 75 – on sale for .99 cents, used a $1.50/1 coupon from the 9/7 SmartSource newspaper insert – resulting in .51 cents overage!

Then I went through the line one more time:

Total spent: Nothing out of pocket, put .18 cents on my gift card
Total before coupons: $11.68

View receipt

Got:

1 gallon of milk
A pound of apples
8 trial sized packets of Zantac 75 – used seven $1.50/1 Zantac 75 coupons, and one $1 off any Zantac product coupon, both from the 9/7 newspaper insert. Both of these coupons say good on any size, so they can be used on trial sizes. The resulting overage paid for the milk and apples!

Then I stopped by Walgreens one more time:

Total spent: Nothing out of pocket, put $23.73 on my gift card. And I will get back $27.50 in rebates!
Total before coupons: $122.77
View receipt – I had to fold it in half because it’s so long! I think this might be the most coupons I’ve redeemed in one transaction.

Got a bunch of stuff:

18 Lindt chocolate bars – MMM! As I mentioned above, for every two bars I used one .75/1 coupon and one “Buy One, Get One Free” coupon from the 10/5 inserts, and stacked them with the $1 coupon from the EasySaver catalog. And I got .46 cents overage for every two bars purchased!
2 bottles of Coffee Mate – used one $1.50/2 printable.
1 roll of foil
1 package of Windex Wipes – on sale for $2.50, used one $1.50/1 printable. I will get $1 back in rebates, making it free!
3 bottles of Pert Plus – on sale for $3.49, used three $1.50/1 coupons from the 9/7 inserts, stacked with a $2.50/1 coupon from the EasySaver booklet – resulting in .51 cents overage each.
2 bottles of Fantastik Cleaner – on sale for $2.50, used two $1.50/1 printables, and will get $2 back in rebates – making them free!
1 Glade carpet deodorizer – on sale for $1.99, used a $1/1 coupon from the 9/14 inserts, and will get back $1 in rebates – making it free!
2 packages of rubber gloves – used coupon from Walgreens sales circular, making them two for $1.
1 bottle of Scrubbing Bubbles spray – on sale for $2.50, used a $2/1 printable (I found it here, but I’m not sure if it’s still available). And I will get $1 back in rebates, so .50 cents profit!
2 bottles of Palmolive dish soap – used a coupon from the Walgreens sales circular to make them .89 cents each, and stacked it with two .25/1 coupons from the 9/28 inserts, making the final price .64 cents each.
3 boxes of pudding
2 boxes of Shout Wipes – on sale for $2.50 each, used two $1.50/1 printables. And I’ll get back $2 in rebates, making them free!
1 Glade Scented Oil Candle – on sale for $3.99, used a $2/1 coupon from the 9/14 inserts. And I’ll get back $2 in rebates, making it free plus a penny profit!
3 packages of TP
1 Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner – on sale for $19.99, used one $10/1 printable. And I will get back a $10 rebate, making it free! Score!
4 Scrubbing Bubbles Action Scrubbers – on sale for $3.99, used four $2.75/1 printables – two from my computer, two from my boyfriend’s. And I will get back $6 in rebates – resulting in $1.04 profit!
I also used my $3 Register Reward from the last transaction.

During this transaction, I had a problem with one of the coupons from the Walgreens sales circular – the coupon for the rubber gloves would not go through. The same manager I had talked to earlier tried and tried to scan it, but it just beeped. He looked at the rubber gloves and the coupon for a long time, and finally had to override the price manually. He couldn’t really say that he wouldn’t accept it just because it beeped, since it was from their own sales circular.

This was a great trip – not only did I not spend anything out of pocket, but if you add up the amounts I put on both my Fred Meyer birthday gift card and my Walgreens rebate gift card, it only comes to $26.06. I’m getting $27.50 back in rebates from Walgreens, so that paid for both the gift card expenditures and then some!

Big thanks again to Money Saving Mom, Deal Seeking Mom, and Common”Cents”ical for posting these deal scenarios! Also, bear in mind that Walgreens changes their sales on Sunday, so the sales this week are different. (I believe Fred Meyer’s also changes their sale prices on Sunday, although I’m not 100% sure. Safeway changes select sale prices on Sunday, with most of the prices changing on Wednesday.)

Here’s Friday’s haul:

Total spent: -.75 cents!
Total before coupons: $7.26
View receipt

Got:

4 Glade plug ins
Over 2 pounds of bananas

So for this transaction, I used 2 of the $2 Glade catalina coupons from my last Safeway visit, and 2 “Buy One, Get One Free” plug-in coupons. The plug-ins are on sale for $1.50, so after buying some bananas at .59 cents a pound, I figured my total would be roughly .20 cents, depending on the actual weight of the bananas. But when the cashier scanned the “Get One Free” coupons, they both took off $1.99. “Oh, look, it’s taking off too much,” I pointed out. “The plug-ins are only $1.50, and it’s taking off $1.99.” To which the cashier replied, “Well, if that’s what it’s taking off, then that’s what it is. I can’t argue with what my computer says.” And since I’d handed over $4 worth of catalinas, it put my total at minus .75 cents. “And you get change back!” she said. So the cashier pretty much insisted on giving me money back! Not to mention that I got $8 in catalinas from the plug-in purchase. Crazy!

Total spent: .05 cents
Total before coupons: $2.05
View receipt

I went through the line one more time to get another pound of bananas and one more plug-in. And I got the same $2 catalina coupon back, so I left the store with $8 in catalinas and an extra .70 cents in my pocket.

Then, I headed to Walgreens:

Total spent: $3.94 – but I’ll get $7.49 back in rebates
Total before coupons: $28.44
View receipt

4 bottles of Pert Plus – on sale for $3.49, and I used 4 $1.50 coupons from the 9/7 newspaper inserts, combined with the $2.50/1 EasySaver Pert coupon, to produce .51 cents of overage for each bottle.
1 bottle of Rimmel foundation – on sale for $7.49, free after rebate
1 box of Zantac – on sale for $4.99, used this coupon for $5.50 off.
2 packages of TP

This transaction was just a mess. Originally, I had planned to get 3 trial size packets of Airborne, on sale for .99 cents, and use the $2/1 coupon from the 9/7 inserts to produce $1.01 overage each. To soak up this overage, I picked up a package of Quilted Northern TP, which would have been $3 after using a $1 Quilted Northern coupon. The remaining 3 cents would be absorbed by the rebate item.

The first Airborne coupon scanned just fine, but then the register refused to take the other 2, or my Zantac coupon (which came from the Walgreens website!). The manager came over and had to push the Zantac coupon through manually. Then he looked at the Airborne coupon for a long time and said, “Oh, it won’t take it because it says limit one per purchase.” I mentioned that each item is considered a purchase, and that I had 3 items. He said that in this instance, “purchase” refers to the whole transaction. I knew this was not accurate information, because if that were the case it would say “limit one per transaction” – for an explanation of this, I recommend this great coupon basics tutorial on Hot Coupon World. But it’s not worth arguing over – if they don’t want to take my coupons, I will just politely put the item back. Anyway, since I had bought the TP as an overage eater for the Airborne, I asked the cashier to just void the TP and all three Airbornes from my transaction. In retrospect, I could have kept 1 Airborne on there and let the rebate item suck up the $1.01 overage, but I was getting so confused and was trying to keep the math simple so that I didn’t end up paying more than I wanted to.

At any rate, the total came to $3.94, which didn’t seem right at all – I had figured that it would come to over $6. So after I paid, I sat in my car with my calculator for a good 5 minutes or so, just staring at the receipt trying to make heads or tails of it. If you take a look at the receipt you’ll probably see why I was having trouble making sense of it! Finally, I realized that the clerk had voided off the Quilted Northern and handed me my coupon back, but the $1 coupon for it had not been voided off. $4.94 was still way lower than I was expecting, but I thought I must have done the math wrong on the Pert.

I headed back into the store, explained what had happened and showed the manager my receipt. “So I owe you a dollar!” I said. He looked a little stunned that I would want to fix an error that was in my favor. “Oh, don’t worry about it,” he said. “It was our mistake. But thank you for coming back in!” So he appreciated my honesty, anyway.

And when I was scanning the receipt in today, I studied it further and added everything up several times, and it finally dawned on me – the $2 coupon for the Airborne hadn’t been voided off, either!! So that’s why it was so low. What a confusing mess that transaction was!

After all that, I headed over to Fred Meyer:

Total spent: Nothing out of pocket, put $7.97 on a gift card that I got as a birthday present. And I got $16 back in catalina coupons!
Total before coupons: $37.95
View receipt

1 Dove deodorant – on sale for $1.99, and there was a tearpad of coupons for $2/1 sitting right next to it. So watch for these if you shop at Fred Meyer!
4 Glade Flameless Candles – On sale for $8.99, and I used 2 $5/1 coupons from the 9/7 inserts, and 2 “Buy One, Get One Free” coupons that I printed here. And I got a $4 catalina back for each candle that I bought! This promo is running at other Kroger stores, Safeway, and probably a few other chains as well.
These candles are great, especially with power outage season fast approaching!

So essentially, I was able to double the amount I had to spend by turning $7.97 on a gift card into $16 in coupons. My cashier was super nice, and couldn’t believe the deal. As I was leaving, I heard her say to the next customers in line, “Did you SEE that?! She got all those $4 coupons back!!”

I then used those coupons to pay for the following items:

Total spent: Nothing out of pocket, put $1.54 on my gift card
Total before coupons: $19.54
View receipt

1 head of organic red leaf lettuce
Just under 2 pounds of organic apples
1 Eggplant
A pound of organic oranges
A pound of broccoli
1 gallon of milk
1 8oz bag of cheese
2 ears of corn
1 canister of bread crumbs
Another free Dove deodorant

Then I made one last stop at Safeway on my way home:

Total spent: .04 cents
Total before coupons: $2.04
View receipt

I used one of my $2 Glade catalinas to buy:

1 package of TP – my favorite overage item! After all, you can never have too much of it, and there’s rarely good sales on it in my area.
1 bag of Cheetos – I was hungry for a snack. The bag was empty by the time I snapped this picture!