I’m a little behind in posting my shopping trips, so I have some catching up to do!

I did a lot of baking over the past few days, and on Thursday night I realized that I was all out of several ingredients. So a trip to Safeway was in order:

Total Spent: .13 cents
Total before coupons: $15.13
View receipt – note that the total on the receipt is $2.13. This is because an item rang up wrong, and I was subsequently refunded $2. I also cut the bottom of the receipt off, since it had my debit card info on it.

I got:

2 pounds of flour
1 dozen cage free eggs
1 package of margarine
1 bottle of shampoo
1 bottle of conditioner
2 bottles of aspirin

There is a promotion running currently at Safeway for Dove hair care, where if you buy 2 Dove products, $2 is supposed to come off your transaction automatically; I read about this on Hot Coupon World, and there was also a sign marking it in the hair care aisle at my store. There was also a “Super Coupon” in the Safeway sales circular last Sunday that makes the Dove shampoo & conditioner 2 for $6. Store coupons can be combined with manufacturer’s coupons, so I also used two $2/1 Dove hair care coupons from the 8/17 newspaper inserts in conjunction with the Super Coupon. After doubles, this would give me $1 of overage. The only problem is that the automatic $2 discount did not come off, which is weird, since the sign did say it was off any Dove. So the cashier just refunded me the $2 that I overpaid, but I did not get a receipt for that transaction, since he just handed me cash.

Also, the Bayer aspirin is on a great sale this week – selected varieties are priced at $1, and there were $1 coupons for Bayer in the 7/27 newspaper inserts! My store will also double these coupons, so I was able to get .50 cents overage on each bottle.

As a side note, if anyone wonders why I use my debit card for such small transactions – the truth is, now that my groceries only cost me spare change, I’ve found that I don’t really need to carry much cash around anymore!

I also needed a few items at Rite Aid:

Total spent: Nothing out of pocket, put $9.85 on 2 gift cards that I earned through various promotions
Total before coupons: $13.85
View receipt

Got:

1 box of band-aids
1 pair of nail scissors
1 pair of tweezers

No exciting deals here, just stuff I had to get. Rite Aid had the best price I’ve been able to find on band-aids currently, and I also needed the scissors. I used a $2/1 Sally Hansen Implement coupon from the 9/28 newspaper inserts to lower the price of the scissors, and since the Sally Hansen tools were on sale for “Buy One, Get One 50%”, I also picked up a pair of tweezers. After the coupon and sale, they were only .47 cents, which is not a bad price for something useful.

Yesterday I realized that I was almost out of coffee, so I made a quick run into Safeway:

Total spent: .10 cents
Total before coupons: $4.10
View receipt (looks like the register was running out of ink, but you can read most of it)

Got:

A little under half a pound of my favorite fair trade & organic Millstone coffee.

I used 2 of my catalinas from Friday’s Glade deal to pay for all but ten cents of it.

Rite Aid is right next door to Safeway, so I popped in to get a rebate freebie:

Total spent: $5.00 – but I’m getting $5.00 back in rebates, making it free!
Total before coupons: $9.00
View receipt

Got:

1 Gillette Fusion razor – used a $4/1 coupon from the 9/28 Proctor & Gamble newspaper insert

Then I came home and ate a coupon-funded dinner:

Baked Eggplant Parmesan – I used this recipe, which I liked a lot!

As you can see, I’m still trying to find a good setting on the camera for food pictures…

Got a few deals tonight:

Total spent: .10 cents – .06 cents on the actual groceries, .04 cents for breast cancer research
Total before coupons: $31.56

View Receipt #1
View Receipt #2

And I got $4 back in catalinas to use on my next trip!

Also, I earned my first 125 miles in the United Airlines GroceryMiles program. I have to earn about 50,000 before I can get a plane ticket anywhere, but it’s worth noting that you can cash in 1,000 miles for Restaurant.com gift certificates. It’s free to sign up for the program – just fill in a form and it will add the promotion to your club card, and your grocery purchases will start to count towards miles.

I got:

1 can of corn
1 4-pack of TP
8 trial size boxes of Tide – used $1/1 coupons from the recent P&G newspaper insert
6 Glade plug-ins – used “Buy One, Get One Free” coupons from another recent newspaper insert. There’s also a printable here.
1 package of pasta – used $1/1 coupon from 8/24 SS insert
1 pint of milk
2 bottles of Coffee-Mate – used $1/1 printables, found here.
2 packages of Stayfree – used $2/2 coupon from 9/28 insert

For my first transaction, I used overage from the Tide to pay for my other items. The trial sizes are .89 cents at my store, and the coupon is good for $1 off any size Tide – resulting in .11 cents of overage (And the store is reimbursed for the full amount of the coupon by the manufacturer, just as a side note). And I was also able to double these coupons, giving me an extra .50 cents of overage each. At my store, any coupon can be doubled up to .50 cents; and there is no restriction on the amount, so your coupon doesn’t have to be .50 cents or less.

So, as an example, a .35 cent coupon becomes .70 cents, a .50 cent coupon becomes $1, a .75 cent coupon becomes $1.25, a $1 coupon becomes $1.50, and so forth. In addition, a coupon can be doubled beyond the item’s face value. So if an item is on sale for $1 and you have a $1 off coupon, it will still double – hence the .50 cent overage on the Tide. This was confirmed by several managers at my store, who said that yes, it’s perfectly legitimate and accepted to get overage this way. I’ve gotten some great questions from readers about my store’s doubling policy, so I wanted to explain it in a little more detail so that it makes more sense. Also, bear in mind that it is up to the discretion of each store to set their own coupon policies – some Safeways don’t double coupons at all.

At any rate, the first transaction was .10 cents, and I got $8 back in catalina coupons towards my next order. I subsequently made my next purchase, and used the catalinas to pay for all of it. And I got $4 back in more catalinas!

Then, I made a quick stop at Rite Aid:

Total spent: Nothing out of pocket, put $2.69 on a gift card that I earned for free from a promotion
Total before coupons: $2.69
View Receipt

So this was a pretty good start to October’s budget!