My KROGER Shopping Trip

So I made another trip to KY today to try shopping at Kroger.  I kept track of how much gas I spent to drive there and back and it was $15.  I'm still trying to decide if it's worth the drive to coupon shop there. So my best buys are above.  I paid $1.60 for everything above. Not bad.  Kroger is running a Mega event this week (actually I think it's several weeks long) which means that if you buy 10 of their participating products then you get a lower price for them.  It got really tricky to make sure I bought strategic items in multiples of 10 with matching coupons to get them free or super cheap.  I really had to use my math skills to crunch my numbers.  I can surely say that this is the first time I felt like one of those people on Extreme Couponing.  It is hard to compile your shopping list, matched to coupons and run your transactions through to insure you get the best deal.  I was watching the totals on the screen making sure it kept going down.

This was my first transaction.  My sub-total was $80.36 and after coupons it was $28.32.  I was pretty happy about that.  My savings was 64%. Some of the products I bought were 10 2-pack tubs of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter that were on sale for $1.79 and I used 10 $1 off coupons from http://www.coupons.com/ and then I also used 5 FREE bread coupons when you buy any 2 ICBINB products.  So I got the butter pretty cheap (which I needed for the upcoming baking holiday meals) and then got 5 loafs of Bunny bread for FREE.

Once I made my first transaction I went back to my car to gather more coupons.  There were many more items on sale that were not on the sale flyer.  I walked every aisle and made a list of more deals I knew I had coupons to match too.  So I made a second trip in the store to get those items but also groceries that I needed for the next week.  So I had many items in this transaction that I had no coupons for but they were on a good sale.  My subtotal was around $108 and was around $68 after coupons.  In this trip is where I bought 6 boxes of the Cool Touch Kleenex for FREE.  They were included in the $.99 Mega Sale (which surprised me that this style was included) and I had 6 SS inserts with the $.50 coupon which doubled to $1 making them FREE.  So I'm stocked up on tissues for the cold and flu season!!!

Because I use a Kroger card I have the advantage of tracking my savings.  From my 2 trips to Kroger (1 in October and 1 in November) I have saved $121.37.  Minus $30 in gas to drive there both times.  So that's not bad but I'm not sold that this is worth doing all the time.  But I also shop with what coupons I have on hand.  I could have easily bought 300 of those Kleenex boxes if I had bought coupons online ahead of time but I really don't want 300 boxes of tissues nor do I want to pay for the coupons (which defeats the purpose of getting them free).  I do think that the third time will be the charm because I'm learning more and more how to do it better.  So till next time...  Oh and I had time today to eat at Moonlight Bar-B-Q (YUM!!!) and went to a Goodwill store and found an awesome vintage wood desk for $10 that I can't wait to refinish.