Offline for 2 weeks

My laptop has been acting up lately and appears to have a memory problem, so I'm sending it to Dell to get it fixed. I'll have to update the blog when I get it back, as it's been crashing and giving me the "blue screen of death", so I'm just making a short blog post for now.

See you in two weeks!

Got behind a bit

I'm a bit behind in posting my finds. Mostly because it seems as though I've lost some receipts (sigh). But I should be able to do an update post on Monday.

I've also been doing a lot of coupon trading over at Hot Coupon World . It's been a fantastic experience so far. I don't have a lot of coupons to trade, so I'm offering to trade stamps and that's worked out well.

Looking forward to updating on Monday! :)

Cake mix and lots of school supplies

I bought another box of cake mix, and with the FLIP it was free.

I also went to CVS, as they are having an awesome stock up sale on school supplies. You need a CVS Extra Care card to take advantage of these deals. You can apply to get one at the store or online. On certain deals, using the Extra Care card produces Extra Care Bucks (also known in the land of coupons as ECBs)...a lot of times these ECBs can make an item free after Extra Care Bucks (FAECB). The ECBs are like a CVS store coupon and can be used on future purchases. There's a lot more about the CVS Extra Care card program so for further reading I would suggest Hot Coupon World's CVS forums HERE.

So, onto my school supply purchases. In real life, I did pay for these with previous ECBs that I had earned on previous deals, but for the purposes of this blog, we'll assume that this was paid with cash out of pocket. All of these items are FAECB for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, but I will not count the ECBs that they earned against the total out of pocket cost, since the ECBs will be used on future purchases (like the school supplies in next week's ad. LOL)

4.00 - 150 sht notebook filler paper @ $2 each

1.98 - Papermate 1.2 pens, 10 ct @ $0.98 each

3.98 - CVS pencils, 24 ct @ $1.99 each

3.00 - 1 inch vinyl binder @$3.00 each

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12.96 (not including sales tax)

NOTE: CVS sales run Sunday through Saturday, so I go to the local 24 hr CVS at midnight when the registers rollover with the new ad, so technically I bought the cake mix on Saturday and the CVS school supplies on Sunday.

Total Out of Pocket to date: $13.84

Total number of items purchased: 11

Cake Mix and Frozen Potatoes

There is a Food Lion down the street from me, and while I go there because it's close, I don't like to use it for my main shopping - they don't take competitor coupons, they don't double, they won't take a store coupon with a manufacturer's coupon on the same item, etc. - very restrictive coupon policy. But they do have internet printable coupons that they send via email when their circular changes on Wednesdays. You can sign up to receive this emails HERE. They are known in the land of coupons as FLIPs (Food Lion Internet Printables). Occasionally they will come up with some coupons that can make an item free or cheap, either on their own at Food Lion, or by taking it to a store that takes competitor coupons (in my case, I take them to Publix).

Most FLIPs have the wording "Limit one use per purchase, of specified product, per transaction, per person, per day", so if it's a good coupon, I try to recruit my husband and my son to go and get the item on a daily basis, as well as myself.

So a couple of weeks back, Food Lion had FLIP for $1.00 off Duncan Hines Cake Mix. There was no size restrictions, and Food Lion happens to carry the small box of cake mix for $1.00. So free cake mix! My son got one yesterday and I got one.

Another FLIP is $1.00 off anything that qualifies for a Guiding Stars rating. Food Lion brand frozen potatoes qualified and also were on sale for $1.88, so after coupon that's $.88 per bag. There are a lot of things that qualify for Guiding Stars that are $1.00-$1.99, so that makes for a lot of free stuff.

Total for yesterday:

$2.00 cake mix (2 trips)

$1.88 FL Brand frozen potatoes

-2.00 Duncan Hines FLIPS

-1.00 Guiding Stars FLIP

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$.88 total Out of Pocket

I've also figured out how to upload my spreadsheet to Google Docs, and have put the link at the right.

Welcome!

I enjoy blogging, and decided to set up a blog to track my progress in building a stockpile of groceries and other household items over the course of one year. I hope it serves as an educational tool for those who want to cut their grocery budgets, so they can see just how little can be spent over a years time to build up a large pantry of groceries, household items,health and beauty items, etc .

To be fair, I do have some items already stocked up, but for the purposes of this blog, we will consider that I am starting out with nothing in the pantry, hall closet, freezer, etc.

I will track the out of pocket costs that I spend on these items, i.e., actual cash out of pocket, after using coupons. I will also track the number of items that are bought. I will use an Excel spreadsheet for this, which I hope to figure out how to upload to Google Spreadsheets for everyone to follow.

Since a stockpile will grow (when items are bought) and contract (when items are used), this blog will follow when items are bought, to make things a little easier to follow.

Thanks for following my journey!