Came here to brag about my grocery trip today.
I bought:
* 3 lb clementines
* 2 zucchinis
* 1 orange bell pepper
* 1 lb asparagus
* 5 bananas
* 1/2 lb fennel
* 3/4 lb fresh green beans
* 10 oz salad greens
* 2 15-oz cans of hominy
* 2 15-oz cans of beans
* 10 1-lb packages of pasta
* 4 24-oz containers of pasta sauce
* 5 "large" (14-19 oz) boxes of Kellogg's cereal
* 1 gallon milk
* 1 dozen eggs
* 2 lb butter sticks
* 2 lb yogurt
* 5 1.5 qt. containers of ice cream
* 1 loaf of sourdough bread
I paid: $46.68
I used my Chase Freedom credit card, which in combination with the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, is currently giving 7.5% back when redeemed for travel, or $3.50 in this case.
I also should be getting $1.35 back from ibotta.
Net total: $41.83
All of this was purchased from QFC, our local Kroger-owned supermarket. If I had gone into the store and bought the same things without any advance preparation (loyalty card, electronic coupons attached to the loyalty card, paper coupons), I would have paid $127.74.
What "tricks" did I use? Several.
First, I have a loyalty card for the store and use it when checking out. Yes, they're tracking you. No, I don't love that. Am I willing to pay a significant fraction more to avoid this tracking? Nope.
Next, I take a look at the weekly ad before shopping. Mostly I'm looking for the Friday/Saturday only (plus sometimes Thursday and/or Sunday) deal that Kroger stores tend to offer each week. These items are often offered at prices that are too good to pass up, and the store limits you to five of each sale item. This week it was the cereal ($1.49 each) and the ice cream ($1.99 each). I also take a quick look at the other items in the ad to see if any of them stand out price-wise. What caught my eye this time was the pasta (99¢ but part of the "buy 6 save $3" deal making them 49¢ each) and the butter (also part of the "buy 6 save $3" and offered for $2.49/lb). All these things I stocked up on are foods that last a while, we use pretty regularly, and we rarely if ever see lower prices for them anywhere (even Costco).
I also make sure to keep my address up to date in the QFC app. This gets us quite a few special store coupons in the mail. Just this week we got a sheet of coupons for $6 off of a $60 purchase, each of the next five weeks, plus a few $2 off $10 of produce and $2 off $10 of meat coupons. I used this week's $6 coupon and one of the produce coupons today.
You might be wondering how I got to use the $6 off $60 coupon when I only spent $46.68. Well, I make sure to hand the cashier that coupon first before any other coupons. As long as your subtotal is over $60 before that coupon is applied, the computer accepts it and you can use more coupons to reduce the total more. In this case I was only a few cents over $60 before coupons. As I am walking through the store with one of these coupons I make tally marks on my shopping list to keep a rough count of the total cost of what I have put in the cart so far. In this case my count was about $7 short after I got everything that was originally on my list, so I picked up an extra six pastas ($2.94) and four pasta sauces ($4.00).
I also used a couple other coupons from previous QFC mailings that I had been holding on to: $1 off three of this brand of pasta, and $1 off the brand of ice cream that was on sale. These coupons usually expire a couple of months out, so there are often opportunities to stack them on top of a discount price as I did here.
For produce, I try to work what's on discount that week into our diet. This creates a nice variety while also keeping things affordable. This week this included asparagus ($1.49/lb), clementines ($1.16/lb), and green beans ($1.49/lb).
For the cereal, I participate in Kellogg's reward program that gives you points for photographing your receipt when you buy their products. I redeemed some of those points for coupons worth $4 off the cereal I bought today. This program is something I'm not 100% convinced is worth my time, but I did get three pairs of socks from them over the holiday season. That puts them in positive territory in my book for a while.
Finally, ibotta. It's an app you can use where you again photograph your receipt to get some money back. They tend to give rebates on name-brand stuff, so anything fitting that description that I'm buying anyway will usually get a quick check on the app just to see. This time I'm getting $1 for the pasta. They also have some less-valuable offers that you can get money for non-name-brand items. This time it's 10¢ for literally buying anything, plus 25¢ for bread. I would have gotten another $1 back for the Kellogg's cereal if the store hadn't been out of Frosted Mini-Wheats. I instead had to settle for other cereals that weren't eligible for that offer. Oh well. Again, this is something I'm not 100% convinced is worth my time. I've gotten about $100 back from it over the past year. It's not nothing, but it's also probably less than minimum wage.
I hope this gives a few good hints on how to optimize things!
