Monday, February 11, 2008

CVS: Thumbs Down; Publix: Thumbs Up!

CVS didn't come through for me this week; I didn't find a single thing in the sale flier that I want to buy. But Publix came through! I was able to purchase everything below for $27.75, including tax. I shopped in three Publix stores to get this. (Monday is a busy kid-shuttling day, and I drove past three different Publix stores today while I shuttled. I didn't go out of my way at all.)To start, our Sunday paper had two mystery coupons, good on Sunday and Monday only. The mystery item was 5 lb of Publix sugar, a very useful item here, for one penny each. I had purchased an extra newspaper for daughter #1 at her request, for the coupons. She won't be able to use her two mystery coupons, since she won't pick up her paper until later in the week, so I used them for her. (Yes, I will give her the sugar.) That made four mystery coupons and four trips to the store in one day. So I divided up what I planned to buy into four units and shopped away.

Some of the pictured items were BOGO, combined with doubled coupons. Some were regular sales, combined with doubled coupons. Some were just very good coupons! I won't recount every item shown, but, for example, the 18 boxes of tissues came out to 31 cents each because of BOGO and doubled coupons. I had six coupons for that brand. The margarine was also BOGO, and combined with a doubled coupon, cost me only 10 cents. I had only one coupon there, so I didn't buy more. The three bags of Mahatma rice were free with the store paying me one penny on each. It was an unadvertised special, and only 10 cents off the regular price, but a 35 cent coupon doubled put it all in my hands for no cost. The only item I paid full price for was the bag of fresh carrots.

However, the photo is not the end of the story. It shows only three of my trips. I still had one mystery coupon to use, and I was running out of "deals". But I had another deal possibility brewing in my brain. I have a mail-in offer from General Mills and Publix: buy 15 of the products listed and get a $10 Publix gift card. By price-checking, matching coupons to sales, and calculator punching, I bought my 15 General Mills items and got my last bag of sugar with the fourth mystery coupon, all for $11.69. And I will get a $10 gift card (if everyone remembers to save their UPC's from their Yoplait yogurt!). That means a net of $1.69 for 12 yogurts, three half gallons of chocolate soy milk, and 5 lb of sugar.

2 comments:

Heather said...

Thank you for the sugar!

Deborah said...

I adore Publix BOGO sales!

My local publix let me in on a secret, though - when they started making people have a coupon for the penny product, so many people comlained, that you don't have to have the coupon - if you have $10 worth of stuff, they take off the rest of the price automatically! So I never take a coupon with me.