Grocery update
13-Jan-07
It’s been awhile since I posted about some grocery adventures. To tell the truth, it’s been awhile since I’ve even DONE much grocery adventuring. I’m not sure if it’s just been a dearth of good deals, or just a lack of desire, or if it was my coupon book being stolen, or some combination of the 3, but I’ve paid full price for some things lately!!!! I know, I know, the horror! And the General Store has been dwindling too as we’ve eaten a lot of our surplus – it doesn’t look quite like this anymore. Though there is definitely that much teriyaki still 
Anyways, we went to Meijer this morning, as we typically do. And while this deal was not quite up to Dan Miller standards, it was pretty good for recent activities.
The background: Kraft has a deal at Meijer where if you buy 6 Kraft items, you get a coupon for $4 off your next order. (You can also buy 4 for $2 or 5 for $3 but 6/$4 is the best deal). Additionally, I had picked up a bunch of $1/3 Kraft coupons at Kroger when I was there last.
Also, when I got there, I saw that Meijer was having a 2-day sale where if you bought $25 of stuff you got a $5 coupon off your next order. I figured that this was before coupons as these deals usually are. So naturally I figured to split up my order into $25 increments. I’m really surprised more people don’t do that in situations like this. Though I guess it does pay to be able to calculate $25 in your head
I ended up with 5 separate orders, whose totals (before coupons) were $26.01, $25.82, $28.70, $25.28, and $26.52. In addition to $89.27 of in-store savings (sale prices and such), my gross grocery total was $221.60.
So, taking $221.60, we subtract out the $89.27 of in-store savings (big winners were the Kraft Cheese being on sale for $1.67 and Dynamo at B1G2F). Then I got 5 $5 off coupons for next week (though it looks like I will annoyingly have to use them in 5 separate orders), 5 $4 off coupons from Kraft and 1 $1 Fuel reward from buying 4 pop-tarts (the fuel reward sheet says it’s supposedly only for the 12-ct, but I’ve found that certain flavors of the 8-ct – at least blueberry and brown sugar cinnamon will also give you a $1 Fuel Reward). Then there were 3 $3/5 Mueller Pasta coupons (though they only gave me up to the price of the 1/2 price pasta and even that I had to fight for, so $7.50), plus the 10 $1/3 Kraft coupons and a coupon that had spit out for me last week for a free hot pocket ($2.35), and topping it off was a $10 coupon for a transferred prescription that I had used to get some prenatal vitamins, and the net total was $56.48, for a savings of $165.12, or 74.5%.
A few notes – the Kraft was on sale for $1.67 (for 8 oz shredded). After my coupon, the 6/$4 deal, and considering it counts for 10/25 of $5 off (or $2) it makes my price $2 for 6 of them, or 33 cents a bag. A very good deal for shredded. American cheese slices were also on sale, but it was the 24 oz for $2.50, so I only bought 3 of those because we’re out.
Also, they have coupons for $10 off any new and transferred prescriptions on the back of their ad this week – I picked up a bunch to use in the upcoming weeks / months. It pays to keep transferring your prescriptions around, and pretty much all the places (Kroger, Meijer and CVS at least) will accept competitor’s pharmacy coupons.