Acme Trip: $18.59 OOP....85% Savings!

Well, I just got back from another late night trip to Acme. Actually, its been awhile, since I've done a trip like this. Thankfully, all 4 of my transactions were planned out, and all my deals worked out perfectly. Did you read my title? I only spent $18.59 for all of that! Looking over the receipts fairly quickly, I think the total for all this stuff would have been about $117 or something like that. I know, some of you must be cringing as you are looking at the 13 boxes of cereal and 28 Yoplait yogurts, but oh, well. We love yogurt (stay tuned as I am now going to be trying Milk Kefir/Yogurt and possibly trying to make my own real yogurt) and we do the not-so-healthy cereal thing every so often. Just this past weekend, we had house guests and my husband asked them what they wanted for breakfast. They said cereal (little did they all know I already had their breakfast planned), and I was a little embarassed to tell them I didn't have any cereal in the house--except some crumbs left in the Cheerios box. Thankfully, they were happy with what I did have for them.

Lucky me, this is THE week (well, not really, there are always sales), to stock up on cereal and yogurt at Acme. Thanks to Mindi at, Moms Need to Know, and looking over the circular myself, I got all the coupon match-ups and deals that worked for us. And I got a few odds and ends that we needed. For those of you interested in hitting the $5 Catalina deal with $20 General Mills products purchase, you'll be happy to know that I got another $2 Catalina for buying the Yoplait yogurt. I was very happy about that!

I'm not going to go over all the details of my transactions, but if you do have any questions, let me know. People often ask me how much time to I spent couponing and planning my trips, and is it really worth it. Of course its worth it! Hands down--its worth it! I probably spend 1-2 hours at the most over the course of a week (not all weeks) researching, planning, clipping, printing, etc., and the savings in money is huge!!!! There are SOOOO many blogs out there that do all the hard work for you. It is all at our fingertips, if you're willing to look. I have about 4-5 blogs that deal with saving and thrifty shopping/living that I check when its time to go shopping. For example, the one I mentioned above, I only check when I am looking to go to Acme because I know all the good coupon match-ups will be listed. So, for example, I looked over the Acme circular over the weekend and began my plan because we were out of cereal and getting low on yogurt (knowing there were great Catalina deals for this week). I then looked over Mindi's blog post, and made sure I had all the coupons I needed and printed any additional ones. I sat down with my calculator and planned out each transaction to maximize the deals in order to have the lowest OOP scenarios. I knew I would roll each Catalina I received tonight into the next transaction. It worked great, no beeping or manager over-rides. I did feel bad because there was an older couple behind me waiting for awhile. But I apologized that I took so long and they were very kind and understanding. I am making it more of a habit to do these kinds of involved trips without the boys. So much easier and everybody is happier.

Have fun shopping! I am looking forward to some happy boys tomorrow when they see the "fun" cereal I got...I still can't believe it...13 boxes! They are not all bad and hopefully if I have any house guests in the next couple of months, we'll still have some!