Just totaled up my remaining grocery receipts for 2009.

Value: $5904
Actually spent: $3444
Total Savings: $2460

Percentage saved overall: 42%
Average spent per week: $66
Total savings just in coupons: $1094.96

Not bad for our first year of mega-couponing and sale-shopping! I was hoping to stay under $100/week, so we managed that quite well. The last few months we weren’t shopping as much because I had so much stockpiled in the pantry and freezers. We also did more shopping without coupons, so that affected our percentage a bit.

And I really miss all the free toilet paper.

Not too many freebies available this week (at least for me – I’ve used up most of my freebie-getting coupons!).

I got 1 of the Buddies soaps at Target, and the other 2 at Kroger. (Used $1.00 off one or $2.00 off 2 Buddies coupons, these are regularly priced at $0.97 and $0.99.)
Quaker Quakes from Kroger (money-maker of $0.51: They were on sale for $0.99, minus $0.50 for the Mega Deal if you buy 10 items, and then a $1.00 off coupon I found in a magazine.)
Colgate toothpaste (on sale for $1.50, minus $0.50 for the Mega Deal if you buy 10 items, used a $0.75 coupon which doubled to $1.00.)
Country Crock margarine – forgot to take it out of the fridge for the photo! (On sale for $1.49, minus $0.50 for the mega deal if you buy 10 items, used a $0.50 coupon which doubled to $1.00.)

And the plants were free too! My local garden center was having a deal today that the first 30 customers got a free plant. It happened to be a forsythia bush! And the pansies were free w/ coupon if you spent $10.00. I bought $10.00 worth of seeds for my vegetable garden.

I got some other deals at Target though.
2 6-packs of Motts applesauce for $0.14 each ($1.69, minus $1.00 Target coupon, minus $0.55 printable coupon).
Huggies Gentle Care Wipes (1 pack of 320. On sale for $8.49. Minus $5.00 printable coupon, minus $1.50 Target coupon = $1.99 for 320 wipes = .0062 per wipe!)
Huggies Gentle Care Wipes (1 pack of 180. Regular price of $5.99. Minus $5.00 printable coupon = $0.99 for 180 wipes =.0055 per wipe!)
Huggies Natural Fit Diapers (1 pack of size 4. Regular price of $10.29. Minus $2.00 Target coupon, Minus $3.00 printable coupon = $5.29)

Sad news…the free Cottonelle toilet paper is no more. At least at my usual store. The 4-packs are completely gone from the shelves, replaced by Angel Soft (which was marked as 10/$10 today). Now, if they keep the Angel Soft at that price, I wonder if there will be any $1.00 off 4-pack coupons anywhere?

Freebies!

9 packs of Cottonelle toilet paper ($0.99, had 9 $0.50 or $1.00 off coupons)*
2 tubes of Aquafresh Toothpaste ($1.00, had 2 $0.75 coupons)
1 Colgate toothbrush ($1.00, had 1 $0.75 coupon)
1 can of 50% less salt Del Monte green beans ($0.99, had 1 $0.75 coupon)
4 small cans of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls** ($1.00, had 4 $0.55 coupons)
5 packages of StarKist Tuna ($1.00, had 5 $1.00 coupons)
1 1/2 gallon of milk (Kevin found a coupon for a free 1/2 gallon laying on the floor the last time he went shopping!)
1 can of Suave hairspray (had coupon for a free Suave product)
1 carton of eggs (had coupon from Kroger for free eggs)
1 box of Nabisco 100 calorie snacks mini Oreo cakesters (had coupon for free box)
1 box of Wheat Thins (had coupon from Kroger for free box)

*We have so much free toilet paper in our house. I’m thinking I should start storing it in the attic as extra insulation. :) There is just about no more room in my cabinets!

**I also bought 2 more of the small Crescent rolls (used a $0.75 off two coupon to make them about $0.63 each), 4 of the Grands Biscuits (had 2 $0.50 off 2 coupons to make them $0.50 each), and 2 small cinnamon rolls (no coupons, $1.00 each). Buying 5 of Pillsbury rolls gave me a $3.00 of my next order at Kroger coupon, so in then end, it was $2.25 for 6 cans of crescent rolls, 4 biscuits, and 2 cinnamon rolls ($0.19 each!).

My overall savings was 50% (with coupons & store sales) at Kroger.

At Target, I bought some Milk-Bones. We don’t have a dog. :) But my mom & dad do! Maggie (their beagle) is now stocked up for a long time with 2 boxes of crunchy bones and 2 bags of the chewy treats. They cost me about $0.75 each after 2 B1G1 free coupons and 2 Target coupons for $1.00 off 2.

We didn’t get out to the grocery store until yesterday. We only went to Meijer. Here are my freebies for the week:

2 bottles of Cascade rinse aid for the dishwasher (normally $3.74 each, 2 coupons from the Home Made Simple coupon books)
1 can of Del Monte No Salt Added diced tomatoes (normally $1.29, coupon for free can from Del Monte site)
2 bags of Quaker rice cakes (on sale for $1.00, there were $1.00 off coupons in the 1/18 paper)
1 gallon of milk (bought 5 boxes of Kellogg’s Nutri-grain bars to get free milk, I also used coupons for the bars and they were on sale)
And since they were doing the 10/$10, get the 11th item free, one of my $1.00 items would have been free also.

All in all, I had almost $29.00 in coupons, and about $26 in store savings.

And I found out that Meijer will take catalina coupons that were printed out at Kroger (the ones that say Manufacturer’s Coupon). Target will take them too. So I got a bottle of Downy for only $0.50 (On sale for $3.50, used a $3.00 catalina coupon that printed out at Kroger a few weeks ago).

We stocked up on the split chicken breasts that were only $1.00 a pound.

And I got an $8.00 off of next purchase of $100 at Meijer catalina for our next trip.

It was a pretty good trip! We got some necessities, some freebies, and saved a lot overall.

I have received $21.79 from YouData since I signed up. Directly into my PayPal account!

I got a lot of ads right at the start, but now it’s just a few a week. That’s normal though. But still, it’s cash directly paid to my PayPal account.

That $21 can buy a nice skein of hand-dyed sock yarn!

If you want to sign up and earn some cash for doing next to nothing, just go to YouData.com and sign up. Fill out your “MeFile” (it’s a bunch of quick surveys about what you like & stuff). Then you will probably already have some ads to view! You can either view the ads on the YouData site, in the Ad Player, or you can view them here on my blog (and if you do, I get a couple of cents extra).

Every now & then they add some new surveys. I just noticed 2 new ones that I haven’t answered yet. I’m off to do so, and hopefully get some new ads to view, and money to earn!

So I just got back from Kroger. They’re doing a deal this week where if you buy 10 certain items, you get $5 off your order (basically a 50-cent savings on each item). Combined with coupons, it’s a heck of a deal.

So armed with my mountain of coupons, I bought 40 of the special items to get $20 off my order (had to do it in 2 orders because there is a limit of 3). All in all I bought 58 items, and spent $77.18. My total savings was $112.89, which works out to about 60%.

If I’d just bought the items in the $5 off 10 deal, my savings probably would have been over 80% (it was 84% savings on my second order which was just 10 items). But I bought our Thanksgiving turkey, apples, stew meat, margarine, milk and a few other items that are necessities but weren’t in the $5 off 10 deal.

I got bonus savings of 15 cents for bringing reusable bags.

I also saved $1.70 with coupons I loaded to my Kroger card. This is over and above any printed coupons I had.

So I got some Betty Crocker Boxed potatoes for free (actually they paid me to buy them!), a free ScotchBrite scrub sponge, and free toilet paper too. Yay free stuff!

Then I got home and got the mail (should have got it before we left!), and had a packet of coupons from Kroger. Lots of free items. I also got a magazine from Kroger that had 3 pages of coupons in it.

Our pantry is overflowing now!

I figured out how to get the Ravelry-powered progress bars working on my blog last night. No more manual updating for me!

I also finished the Alberta Socks. I brought them with me to work today, hopefully I can get a photo. Luckily my coworkers are all pretty tolerant of my knitting and photo-taking. :)

In non-knitting news…My coworker is getting really into couponing and making/saving money. She’s doing all the crazy stuff at Walgreens and CVS, and taking advantage of money-earning deals at the stores. I’ve always cut coupons and matched them up to sales as best I can, so we’ve been swapping ideas and coupons and anything else. I told her of a few things I’ve been doing to earn money/giftcards. And I found some more in the past few weeks. Once I know they’re valid and good, I’ll pass them along here! But here is the first one I already know is a good thing:

I added a little ad-box to my sidebar. Now, before you get all upset that I’m putting advertising on my blog, hear me out. This one is pretty cool! It’s called YouData, and if you don’t want to see ads, then you don’t. You have to sign up to see any ads. You create a “MeFile” and then you get ads if you want. Then they PAY YOU for looking at the ads. Seriously! Every Friday, they deposit the amount you’ve earned into your PayPal account. I signed up last Friday morning. Set up my MeFile, clicked on the ads they had for me, and then later that afternoon, got a deposit of $4.11 in my PayPal account! I already have another $5.35 earned this week. Now, if you do sign up, and choose to look at your ads on my blog here, instead of on the YouData site, then I will earn an extra few cents. I even like the advertisers they have! I found a new blog to watch, and have poked around at some other very interesting sites (Soap Nuts – ever heard of those? I’m tempted to buy some just to see how they work!).

So, if you sign up, I’d appreciate it if you look at your ads via my blog. It helps pay for my time updating & hosting for the KnitAlongs site. And if I earn enough, I can use it to hold contests and buy prizes!