Working the Chains

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We don’t do chain restaurants very often, unless we are on the go, but we do like Outback Steakhouse. A couple of our friends do too and it’s an easy meeting spot, since it is equidistance between our two homes.  We decided it had been a while, so we set a date to have dinner. This immediately put me in motion.

Outback recently gave a $10.00 coupon to anyone who liked their facebook page. So, that’s pretty easy. My husband printed one from his facebook account and I did too. One for us and one for our friends. That was a nice find, but I wasn’t satisfied.

Kroger has a gas points program like many grocery stores. For every 100 points you accumulate for shopping there, you get $.10 off a gallon at the Kroger gas tanks.  Many times a year, they offer a deal that for every gift card you buy in the store you get 4x the points. So, if you buy buy a home depot gift card for $100.00 because you have a DIY project, then that $100.00 purchase, which would normally render $.10 a gallon off in gas points, will multiply 4x and offer you $.40 a gallon.

That deal is being offered right now at Kroger, so I promptly purchased an Outback gift card at Kroger to pay for our dinner. That purchase alone will save us about $3.00 at the tanks when we go to fill up our cars next week.

So, I’m feeling pretty good about that. So far $13.00 savings toward a meal for two. But as my grandma might say "If that don't beat all".... I read online that if you mention “ race car Driver Ryan Newman” to your server that very day  then you get a free bloomin’ onion!

We had so much fun with our friends and would have happily gone with no coupons, but it sure was fun to find all those deals that they could also enjoy!

Give It A Month

I hope you try it. Even for a month and just see if it is for you. Store brands can be cheaper, but not always.  Before I started to coupon and become intentional about what I threw in my cart, I really did not like to go to the grocery store. I sort of wandered about and then paid a lot of money for stuff that would likely be gone in a week. Aimlessly doing anything is not very satisfying. Having a plan and executing it is very satisfying.

Here is what I got this week at Kroger for $23.77. And don’t forget that the register spit out $1.00 coupon toward my next visit to Kroger, so in some ways it was a $22.77 kind of day. My receipt says I bought 21 items, so that averages out to $1.08 per item.

I just go to my favorite coupon match up site, Southern Savers, and they tell me what is on sale and where to get a coupon for that item. I even click a little box next to the item that I want and when I am finished clicking, it prints a grocery list for me.

What could be better than that? Lasagna for 2= $3.00. Four boxes of pasta=$.25 a piece.

Toothpaste=Free. Italian Sausage=$.99. Pineapple=$.50 a piece.

Try it. One month. See what you think. Tell me about it.

CVS and more on why it's worth considering

I had a $10.00 gift card to spend.

Purchase #1: A greeting card. Nothing exciting there.

Purchase #2: One of those heating packs that you wear for about 8 hours. It cost $3.79, but when you purchase it, you get $3.79 in extra care bucks. So, now I just have the remaining gift card balance of $4.19 and a receipt for $3.79 in extra care bucks which equals $7.98 to "spend "at CVS

So far I have a card and a heating pad and have "spent" about $2.00 but not really because because I used a  gift card!

Purchase #3: Five 12 pack cases of diet coke. Each cost $3.00. I had $2.00 in manufacturers coupons for the cokes and $7.98 to put toward my purchase. I ended up paying $5.02 + tax or $5.39 out of pocket for those 5 cases of diet cokes.

BUT because the CVS deal was that if you buy $15.00 in coke products, you get $5.00 in extra care bucks back, I got $5.00 back!!  Not to mention $1.00 more for using my bag tag. 

So, now I have $6.00 to spend.  All that and $6.00 more to spend. Yep.

Will let you know how much I can buy with the $6.00.

In sum:  a card, a heating pad, 5 12-packs of diet coke for $5.39. But they gave me $6.00 for doing all of that. Awesome.