Couponing School of Hard Knocks

This has been quite the week for me.

I had 1 1/2 days to get my deals together and go get them. I worked 3 days, off 1 day, and back in tonight for 3 nights. I hate this rotating schedule. Fontunately, the company I work for is changing the schedule in August.

Just the highlights this week.

Safeway
6 canteloupes and 2 lbs of strawberries for $8.50 - Canteloupes were 10/$10, and the strawberries were 2/$5 - I had a coupon for 1 lb of strawberries when you purchased $10.00 of produce.

I picked up 24 lbs of ground beef for $1.47/lb. I broke it up into 16 1 1/2lb. packages, vaccum sealed them, and froze them.



So I learned that Safeway changed their IP coupon policy to accept on one IP per like item per transaction.

Walgreens
4 chinet 2/$3 - 4 x 1/1 = $2.00
2 ecotrin 45ct - 2 x 2/1 = FREE 2 x $2.00 RR = Got paid $4.00 so I picked up two news papers for free (they are $2 each here)

Store manager wouldn't let me buy the rest of the ecotrin (I had 6 more coupons, and they had the stock). He did give me a raincheck for 4 at the sale price. I will still get them for free, but will not get paid the RR's.

I went to 3 other Wags in the area. 2 of them didn't even have the sale listed (they were out of stock anyway), and the third one was out of stock but did have the sale listed.

I'm still debating on if I am going to file a complaint. If I do, it will be with the manufacturer of ecotrin as well as Walllgreens. Further more, this is an FSA item. He is forcing me to use my FSA funds to pay for them in the future instead of letting me take advantage of the sale. I might file a claim with the FSA trustie as well.

FSA = Flex Spending Account for healthcare related items.

Albertsons
Picked up 8 Tree Top juices and 2 V8 juices for a grand total of $3.60.
I did buy some other things, using coupons of course, but nothing spectacular. I am still under budget, and am finally starting to see the fruits of my labor. Each week I seem to be adding something to the list of "ok for the month", or longer.

Ground beef and apple juice were the items this week. If Walgreen's would have cooperated, ecotrin would have been added too.

The paper plates are for DH's family reunion in August.

Most of this week has felt like an uphill battle. But after reading this I have to say that it really wasn't too bad for a week that seemed to focus on store brands at almost every store in town. Looking forward to seeing what's ahead for next week.

Valuable lessons learned in the past week or so:
Always have the store ad with you. If the store is out of a certain item, you may have to make adjustments on the fly.
Always have your coupons with you, even if you are going in for a specific deal. I missed some really good unadvertised specials.
Always have your "deal sheets" printed and summarized.
Know who the "super clerks" are and avoid them. They tend to make up their own rules.
Don't go shopping when you are tired, hungry, frustrated, pms-ing, or in a hurry.
Watch the clerks when they are scanning your mq's, some are really good at "missing" them.
At Albies, make sure they scan your preferred card first. If they do it at the end, they can actually stop the discounts by hitting the "sub-total" button during the adjustments. (I had to go back and get certain discounts that got interrupted.)
Pay attention to limits in the adds. If the limit is 3 then the 4th is full price.
Don't be afraid to speak up.
Most of these are in the couponing 101 thread. I've read it a dozen times and still had to the learn through the "School of Hard Knocks".