Publix - $184.96

 Here you go!

Cost $184.96
Paid: $47.64

A 74% savings!!!!

- 8 boxes Fiber One Cereal
- 4 boxes Fiber One Chewy Bars
- 8 cans tomato sauce
- American cheese singles
- 2 Country Crock butters
- 4 Cookie doughs
- 4 boxes of Jala frozen yogurt bars
- 2 jars of peanut butter
- 2 jars of pickles
- 4 boxes of Ronzoni pasta
- 10 John Freida shampoos/conditioners
- 3 John Freida styling products

The John Freida deal is awesome!!! Each product or shampoo/conditioner normally costs $5.99, but we only paid $.49!! And so naturally we bought 13....

Couponing 101

Ok so some people have asked how we do this thing called couponing...and because we love it so much we will let you in our our little secrets. For the next month or so we'll guide you through how to coupon, where to coupon and how we basically have learned to get paid to take things out of stores. All of this info is going to be based for the Atlanta area, so if you live outside that radius or even in another state, we can't guarantee these deals will work at your stores.

So to start this off we'll teach you all about Publix. Publix's sales start Thursdays in Atlanta. They are by far the best place to shop because they have about 20 items BOGO (buy one get one free) every week, they accept competitor coupons (ie, target, walmart, kroger) and they double any coupon that is $.50 or less (so if your coupon is for $.40 off it will actually count as $.80).

***When printing coupons, once you hit print, hit the back button and it will reprint, giving you 2 coupons!

So this Thursday here is what you can get for free or nearly free and how you can accomplish that:

Wishbone Dressing, BOGO, $2.73
- Use 2 Publix $1/1 coupons
(you can print them or get them at the front of the store)
- Cost: $.73 or $.36 each

Ronzoni Pasta, BOGO, $1.39 (excluding wheat, garden delight)
- Go to Ronzoni.com and print off any coupons $.50/1
- Use 2 $.50/1 per BOGO (2 boxes)
- Cost: -$.61 (yes they owe YOU)

***I have (6) $.55 off coupons to whoever wants them...The pasta won't be free but it will only be $.14 a box...First come first serve!!

Propel Zero, 6pk, BOGO, $3.99
- Use 2 $1/1 coupons from 5/1 newspaper
- Cost: $.99/6pk

***I have a bunch of these coupons and don't like Propel

Tostitos Salsa, BOGO, $2.89
- Use 2 $1/1 from 5/1 newspaper
- Cost: $.44 each

Chinet Napkins, BOGO, $2.15
- Use 2 $1/1 coupons from Chinet.com
- Cost: $.07 a pack

Pedigree Denta Stix for Dogs, BOGO, $3.00
- Use 2 $1/1 Publix Coupons
- Use 2 $1/1 from 5/1 newspaper
- Cost: -$1.00 (they pay you $1)

***I don't have dogs but I have a bunch of these coupons!!

YoPlait, YoPlus Yogurt, $1.50
- Use $2/2 Publix coupon
- Use (2) $1/1 yoplait.com printable coupon
- Cost: -$1.00 (they pay you $1)

Now there's some other deals as well, but you would have to have coupons stored up from months past to have them. These are all deals you can get by going to Publix and picking up their coupons in the front of the store and then combining them with ones you can print at home.

Ideal Scenario:

You buy -

(2) Wishbone Dressing, $.73

(6) Ronzoni Pasta, -$1.83

(2) Propel Zero, 6pk, $1.99 (12 bottles total)

(2) Tostitos Salsa, $.88

(2) Chinet Napkins, 40-90ct, $.14 (180 napkins)

(6) Pedigree Denta Stix for Dogs, -$3.00

(2) YoPlait, YoPlus Yogurt, -$1.00

Should Cost: $27.93 before tax

You'll Pay: -$2.09...yep, they will owe you $2.09

...and that's how it's done folks
-------------------------
***UPDATE:

So here's what we went and picked up. It was $65.01 and we paid $7.87. The DentaStix paid for a chunk of the other things. Pretty good!

extreme couponing - may 14th edition

Did a little extreme couponing today. Needed some staple (expensive) items such as truvia and fiber one bars so we decided to let the free items practically pay for them. It's a good week for cheap-o stuff at publix!

- 15 Fuze drinks: normally $1.29, paid $.33 (Total: $5)
- 9 Mahatma rices: $.89, was paid $.11 per bag (Total: -$.99)
- 5 packs of Bandaids: $.79, was paid $.21 per container (Total: -$1.05)
- 6 Stride gums: normally $1.49, paid $.34 (Total: $2.04)
- 4 homestyle Mac & Cheeses: normally $2.59, paid $.30 (Total: $1.20)
- 2 FiberOne yogurts: normally $2.50, paid $1 (Total: $2.00)
- 2 FiberOne bars +free Publix brand bars: normally $3.69, paid $1.13 (Total: $3.38)
- 40 ct Truvia packets: normally $3.99, paid $2.99
- Mentos gum: normally $1.50, paid $.25

Would have cost: $72.99
Paid: $16.23

$169.75...

We have officially mastered extreme couponing. We're not sure you're quite comprehending this picture, so we'll break it down for you:
- 48 rolls of Cottonelle toilet paper
- 10 Right Guard body washes
- 4 Crest ProHealth Whitening toothpastes
- 2 92-count GUM flossers
- 2 Schick Hydro shaving creams
- 8 BIC Soleil shavers
- 12 Noxema shavers
- 20 boxes/bags of pasta

The total of all of this came to $169.75.

The store paid us $2.29 to take it...Yes, we paid nothing and they paid us.

best.day.ever.

Success!

So one of us spent the Easter holiday basking in the Florida sunshine while the other stayed here all alone ):

To keep myself busy I cooked, ran around, laid by the pool, etc...

...and then Sunday I extreme couponed...and SERIOUSLY succeeded. Here is what is pictured above:
- (4) 3-packs of Soleil Razors
- (2) 100 count boxes of Splenda
- A massive bag of Stayfree maxi pads
- A Yakisoba mac and cheese dinner
- A Voskos greek yogurt cup
- (2) Luster teeth whitening tooth paste (normally $8 each)
- A Smart Balance skim milk
- A package of Hormel Naturals smoked ham
- (3) tubes of Crest toothpaste
- (2) full size Dove men's deodorant
- (3) travel size men's/women's deodorant
- (2) bags of M&Ms
- (4) Reach flosses
- A bag of Always pantyliners
- (2) 2-packs of Purel laundry kits
- A Wet-N-Wild nail polish (I forgot to put it on the table!)

Now the funniest part about all this stuff is first of all, I don't use men's deodorant, maxi pads, or pantyliners. I also don't even eat Splenda because I'm allergic to it...but it was at the same store and I was buying other things and its FREE!!! So why wouldn't you take it? So we will probably open up a store at our apartment and give away the stuff we don't want...or trade it for bottles of wine, chocolate, etc....

How much did all this add up to?

$64.80

How much did I spend?

$.13

yes, that's 13 cents....

Couponing Part Two

We basically just owned Publix & Kroger...The cute little girl at the checkout watched as the total kept plummeting with every coupon she swiped...all she could say was "wow, you uh sure have some good coupons".

Kroger we walked out without paying for anything. That's where the random deodorant and Yakisoba meal came from. It's next door to Publix and we knew they were free so, why not? Yeah that was kind of weird...going to the register, it ringing up as them owing us $. 25 cents (Kroger doesn't pay you if you save in the negatives apparently)...and we walked out with free stuff.

On to Publix...see the 4 4-packs of YoPlus? We didn't pay for those (normally $2 each)...
- Chobani $1.33: we paid $.40
- Triscuits $3: we paid $.50
- Idahoan Potatoes $1.25: we paid $.37
- Kraft Singles $3.49: we paid $1
- Kraft Shredded Cheese $3.79: we paid $.66

Total: $40.58 (including the Kroger stuff)
We Paid: $7.48

This was AWESOME.

Our First Extreme Couponing Adventure

I'm sorry, but have you seen this show?!? Ok, so we got sucked in because one of our cousins is featured on it...but when we saw it, we were hooked. We aren't quite sure why we watch things on reality tv and then always decide that these ridiculous shows are awesome and we must participate in whatever activity is being thrown at our faces that very moment. As is the case with Extreme Couponing.

The first week's episode featured a quite fashionable and young mom participating in the above activity with her son and best friend. Now, you may not know much about couponing, but when you find out what it is you basically feel idiotic that you have spent your whole life paying for items in stores. These people get everything for free, or even get paid to take things out of stores...it doesn't sound possible, but it is. So we are obviously young and have so many things we could be spending our hard earned cash on besides groceries and toiletries and toilet paper (hey now, you know that charmin is expensive!) So what did we decide to do? Yep, try the couponing thing out for ourselves. We're too young to get the Sunday paper, so we settled on four dives into newspaper recycling bins by our house and printing coupons offline. (We didnt actually get in the dumpster, we just pulled out the top 50 newspapers or so) We clipped the coupons, waited for this weeks circulars to appear online, and made a plan.

We decided to hit up Publix, because it had the best weekly deal offerings. Now the way that it works best is actually to use stores like Publix. Publix offers about 20 items Buy One, Get One (BOGO) every week. They also accept coupons from any competitor store and they will double your coupons (swipe each one twice) if they are $.50 or under. So for example, if Crest Toothpaste was $2.00 and BOGO, Target released a Crest $.50 off one tube coupon, and in Sunday's paper there was also a $.50 off one tube coupon you would get 2 tubes of Crest toothpaste for free...2 tubes of toothpaste $2.00 (BOGO) minus Target's coupon swiped twice (-$1.00) minus Sunday's paper coupon swiped twice (-$1.00) = $2.00 - 1.00 - $1.00 = FREE!!!!

Extreme Couponing shows you people going into stores, racking up $1600 grocery bills, and walking out paying about $7.00 total...we aren't exaggerating. One of our cousins does it all the time. So naturally, we had to try this. We wanted to do it on a small scale, so we devised a plan and set out. Now right before we left for the store, we had a malfunction with our computer and couldn't print out our coupons...so we ended up only being able to use the ones we already had. We'll show you what we got, how much it cost, and how much it would have cost if we had gotten our coupons from online.

Here's our treasure pile...minus one bag of Dove chocolates because SOMEONE couldn't wait until we got home to start eating them ::cough, cough::

- 6 boxes of Special K cereal: regularly $3.95 each, we paid: $1.30 each
- 2 cans Pam cooking spray: regularly $3.19 each, we paid: $.89 each
- 1 Airwick double pack refill oils: regularly $5.50, we paid: $2.99
- 2 boxes of Triscuits: regularly $2.99 each, we paid: $1.50 each
- 2 bags Dove chocolates: regularly $4.24 each, we paid: $1.62 each
- 2 Tropicana orange juices: regularly $4.00 each, we paid: $2.00 each
- 2 50 count Mentos gum: regularly $3.29 each, we paid: $1.14 each
- 10 Chobani yogurts: regularly $1.33 each, we paid: $1.00 each
- 2 bags Alexia buttermilk biscuits: regularly $3.39 each, we paid: $1.42 each
- 2 boxes Duncan Hines cake mix: regularly $1.83, we paid: $.64 each
- 2 boxes Quaker chewy granola bars: regularly $2.99, we paid: $.75 each
- 2 boxes NutriGrain bars: regularly $3.49 each, we paid: $1.25 each
- 2 Dial hand soaps: regularly $1.59 each, we paid: $.30 each
- 9 Bird's Eye frozen vegetables: regularly between $1.79-$2.39 each, we paid: $.21 each

Grand total before coupons and discounts: $125.33 ($62.67 each)
What we paid: $51.29 ($25.65 each)

Now, three things did not get the coupon usage of our online coupons. Those were:
- Chobani: an additional $.60 off each yogurt (-$6.00)
- Triscuit: an additional $1.00 off each box (-$2.00)
- Alexia biscuits: an additional $1.00 off each bag (-$2.00)

That would have made the Chobani $.40 each, the Triscuits $.50 each and the Alexia biscuits $.42 each...and our grand total only $41.29 ($20.65 each).

We don't know about you guys, but usually we are the ones paying the full $125 grocery bills. On this trip alone we had the opportunity to save about 68% (had our printer worked). Why wouldn't you want extra money??? We sure as heck do!