So I got back in with a new strategy - take it slow and focus on one store first. Naturally, I chose CVS because well, that's where Joe works and if I ever made a mistake in using a coupon, we still had his employee discount to fall back on. I began looking out for deals for things that I always use like this:
which I use at least once a week (totally NOT working though!).Most recently, CVS began a partnership with BP and Shell that if you spend up to $30 on certain products (the list of products rotates weekly), you get a $10 Shell or BP card. Since I buy my stuff from CVS anyway, I figured I might as well take advantage - which I did last night. My "savings", though not quite Extreme Couponing-esque, I thought was still pretty good. Using only a few coupons (I think I only had 4) and store sales, the retail price for my purchases was about $90 and I paid only $50 plus got a $10 gas card, an extra $2 of CVS Extra Bucks that I can use towards future purchases, and received another coupon that was good for $10 off $50 purchase next time. So in all, I really spent only $38 for a $90 worth of stuff that we use anyway (toilet paper, toothpaste, kleenex, laundry detergent, etc.).
Already feeling pretty good about myself, I went home and started to reorganize my coupon book. As I started looking through some of the current grocery store circular, I stumbled upon a Giant gas promotion that they're doing with Shell stations. Basically, they give you 1 point her $1 spent at Giant and each 100 pts can be redeemed for $0.10 cents off / gallon at the pump. They also run deals where if you buy 7, 6, or 3 items from a list (this week the list is pretty good - strawberries, clementines, mushrooms, salad kits, paper towels, etc.), you get 200 pts which means $0.2 off / gallon of gas. The limit is pretty high (like 2200 pts redeemed at once) so you could in theory get up to $2.20 off/gallon. So starting today, I'm going to plan carefully to combine the CVS gas card promo and the Giant gas card promo. The goal for this week - earn 600 pts at giant by buying from their 200 pts list and use that to get $0.6 off / gallon. If I fill up at my local shell at $3.89/gallon, I would pay $62.24 retail. With my accumulated deals ($10 CVS Shell card and $0.6 off/ gallon from Giant), I would pay only $42.64 for a full 16 gallon tank.
Not bad at all....
Actually, it's pretty sad that i think $42.64 is not bad for a full tank of gas. I knew I should have bought that hybrid!
