My New Addiciton

Have you ever heard of Groupon? If you haven't you are so missing out on a whole other reason to get out of bed in the morning. I wish I was kidding but this site is now one of the first things I check in the morning. You can read all about it here but the bottom line is they have a deal a day. I've bought house cleaning, jeans and tons of food.

Today I got my hair cut and colored compliments of a groupon. Turns out the salon normally charges $160 and I paid $45. Thank.you.very.much.

BEFORE

AFTER

I know the change isn't dramatic but I just needed a haircut bad. So when this popped up on Groupon - let's just say it was a good day.

The site has actually challenged someone to live solely on Groupons for a year. If I was in college or just out I would totally have signed up. Sounds like an adventure and the $100,000 at the end doesn't sound so bad either. Unfortunately I'm an "adult" and I didn't think the adoption agency would have liked the concept very much.

Personal Best

I went to Kroger last week and out of nowhere they were tripling all coupons under $1. After checking with customer service (and calling my friends who also coupon) I pulled out all my 75 cent coupons and went to town. Before coupons my total was $49.63 for all of this:

Seventeen coupons later I paid $11.37 out of pocket.

I try to not geek out over this stuff too much on the blog but this trip was just so ridiculous I had to share.

Take that Logan's

Last week Joshua and I were sitting down to dinner and realized that this is probably the cheapest meal we have ever eaten (and by far not the worst.) We rarely add up the cost of our meal but because we just bought the ingredients that day the costs were just too obvious. Here is what you can do with coupons and a little time:

Popcorn Shrimp:
On sale for $1.00

-$1.00 coupon

TOTAL = FREE

Green Giant Frozen Corn:
On sale for $1.09

-$.50 coupon (doubled to $1.00)

TOTAL = $0.09

Kraft Macaroni and Cheese:
On sale for $0.50

Ingredients of Butter and Milk: $0.12

TOTAL = $0.62

Betty Crocker Brownie Mix:
Free after rebate

Ingredients of Eggs and Oil:$0.11

TOTAL = $0.11

The grand total of the meal that we did NOT make from scratch: $0.82. That doesn't even seem possible to us and we buy the ingredients every week. The crazy thing is that we got seconds and have 90% of the brownie left and another serving of mac and cheese.

Joshua and I always baulk at the Logan's commercial that says you can eat at their restaurant for the cost of eating at home but we have never had a side by side comparison.

$13.99 vs. $0.82 Yep, that seems about even.

Worth Pushing Back from the Table For

This week CVS has got Walgreens beat and the best thing is you can shop there tomorrow. I'm listing the things I want but there is a complete list of free items in the CVS ad tomorrow. I have $7 in ECBs so that is how I choose my groups. I want the least amount out of pocket so I will be checking out 2 times tomorrow.

Transaction One:

Bic Soleili razor w/ 2 blades...2.99 (5.99 ECBs back)

• $3 coupon from the paper

Colgate Total toothpaste...1.49 (2.99 ECBs back)

• $1.50 coupon here
• or $1 coupon from the paper

Gatorade G2 20oz...1.49 (1.49 ECBs back)

Hershey King Size Bar...1.00 (1.00 ECBs back)

CHECKOUT: 6.59 ECB and $0.38 plus tax OOP

Transaction Two:

Gatorade G2 20oz...1.49 (1.49 ECBs back)

Colgate Total toothpaste...1.49 (2.99 ECBs back)

• $1.50 coupon here
• or $1 coupon from the paper

L'Oreal Colour Juice sheer lipgloss...5.99 (6.99 ECBs back)

• $1 coupon from paper

CHECKOUT: 8.48 ECB and $0.49 plus tax OOP

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I start with $7 in ECBs and then end with just over $15 in ECBs plus I got all this fun stuff for free.

Happy Thanksgiving to All!

Free Dr. Pepper

So back in March the marketing team at Dr. Pepper said they would give a free Dr. Pepper to everyone in America if the release of Guns N' Roses album "Chinese Democracy" drops in 2008. I don't really understand their tie to Guns N' Roses but I guess they felt like it was a safe bet since the recording began in 1994.

But people ... the album goes on sale on Sunday November 23rd at 12:01am and for the 24 hours after that you can get a coupon for a free Dr. Pepper at www.drpepper.com

Enjoy - or print the coupon and send it to me :)

Friday and Saturday at Walgreens

Yay for the $5/20 coupon from Walgreens this week. You can get it here.

What I'm Going To Do:

L'Oreal Age Perfect Pro Calcium Radiance Perfector...13.99

$1 coupon from the paper

Submit for full 14.99 rebate through November Easysaver

Almay One Coat Mascara...5.99

$1 coupon from the paper

Submit for full $6.99 rebate through November Easysaver

Progresso Soup (buy 4)... $0.60

$1.10/1 coupon here (print 4)

4/$5 coupon from weekly Walgreens ad

Clabber Girl Baking Powder (buy 2)...$1 or FREE (don't need this for the scenario but I want it)

$1/2 coupon in some papers last week

2/$1 coupon from weekly Walgreens ad

Don't forget to use your $5/25 coupon

TOTAL AFTER COUPONS: 15.98 or 16.48 plus tax

TOTAL REBATE: 21.98

What Tawna Should do for Some Diapers

L'Oreal Age Perfect Pro Calcium Radiance Perfector...12.99

$2 coupon from the paper

Submit for full 14.99 rebate through November Easysaver

Pampers Jumbo Pack...8.49

$1.50 coupon from the paper

$1 Register Rewards will Print

Don't forget to use your $5/25 coupon

TOTAL AFTER COUPONS: 16.48 plus tax

TOTAL REBATE and REGISTER REWARD: 15.99

So you can either make $4.00 or get some cheap diapers. Either way it is a great deal!

Why I Can Never Pay Full Price Again

Joshua and I are about 3 months into our Grocery Game experience and let me just tell you it has changed our perception of groceries and eating. Every weekend we no longer have to sit around and say, "what do you want to eat this week?" "I don't know, what do you want to eat?" We dreaded the day of grocery shopping and meal planning.

Now we only shop the sales and we make whatever can be found in our pantry. This sounds boring but to us it is a game.

Sunday is Scavenger Hunt. We search the list for great deals and then race through the store finding all the items, because there is nothing more frustrating than watching the person in front of you pick up the last $.04 soy sauce. Seriously, we love Sunday shopping.

Then the dishes for dinner are like a puzzle. What can you make with noodles, ground chicken and tomato sauce? Oh yeah, I know we have some cheese and so we can make Chicken Spaghetti. Woo hoo! Right now we have about 10 boxes of pasta in our pantry so we are getting creative with noodles.

And all this fun...for the price of the grocery game which is $7.50 a month for 2 grocery stores ($5 if you just do one store). We have literally cut our grocery bill from $70/week to $30/week so you will find no complaints here. Plus, we have some friends who are also into living embarrassingly cheap and there is just nothing like geeking out with them about the free Reynolds Wax Paper, or the salad dressing we got for $.20

Shameless Plug: If you decide to try the grocery game (trial is 1 dollar for 4 weeks) let them know you heard about them from wiffut at comcast dot net

How I Know I Married Right

Joshua and I have started doing a very strange thing for fun. I know, everyone is thinking "you do a lot of strange things" but even in the midst of how much fun this is - I still recognize and agree that it is weird. Drumroll....

We go shopping at CVS once a week to see how much we can buy for the littlest amount of money. It has become our date night and we love it because it is kind of like a treasure hunt.

The last few weeks we've been doing it with the assistance of The Grocery Game. But this week the list wasn't spectacular so we did some web searching to see what other people were doing and headed to the store with our calculator and coupons and spent a great hour.

We walked into the store with only coupons, no store credit or anything and here is what we got:

1 Revlon Lash something Mascara

1 Sunsilk Shampoo

1 Sunsilk Styling spray

1 CVS aloe body lotion

4 Twelve packs of Pepsi

1 Twelve pack of Mountain Dew

$9.40 spent - including tax!

I actually discovered a way to make it $8.40 once we were home, but you couldn't buy the Pepsi's for $9.40 so I'm not beating myself up.

Here is where I learned about "CVSing" if you want to check it out and here and here are a couple of coupons that made it possible.