Reader Jami from Lexington, KY sent us the following question.

I’ve been couponing for about 2 months and I love couponing!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m not sure if I know what 10 for $10 means. I read on this site that 10 for $10 doesn’t mean you have to buy 10 items. Can you buy 2 items that equals 10 dollars and use a coupon? This is something Kroger’s does alot. They will have 10 for $10 and have items in bins that you have to pick from, like deodorant, bateries, candy and etc.

Then, Kroger also has 10 for $10 with 5 dollars off. This is where throughout the store there’s certain items on the shelves and says buy 10 for 10. Example, they had gain detergent and it was 10 dollars. I thought I’d have to buy 10 gain detergents. They told me it was certain tagged items throughout the store. However they were not dollar items….help please:)
thank you so much

Dear Jami,

This is an excellent coupon regarding 10 for $10.00 sales. Here is how it works. If something is on sale 10 for $10.00 you usually do not actually have to buy 10 items unless the ad states that you need to buy 10 to get the sale price. This would be worded in the actual sale flyer or online as something along the lines of “Must purchase 10 to get this price”. So what that means that those things are really just on sale for $1.00 each. You can buy 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 12, however many you like (unless there is a limit stated in the ad) and each one would be $1.00 each. This type of pricing also applies to other sale prices such as 4 for $5.00, 8 for $8.00, 3 for $10.00 etc. We have a printable cheat sheet for anyone that may not always be able to do the math on the fly when something is on sale on these X For $X.XX type sales. I have it printed out an in my binder for quick reference.

Now if you have a sale like you have going on at Kroger (I have the same sale going on right now) this is a deal where you have to buy certain qualifying products in groups of 10 in order to get the $5.00 discount. This is a called “Mega Sale” at Kroger. So in this case you do have to buy 10 items to get the $5.00 discount, however you do not have to purchase 10 of the same things. You could buy 1 of the detergent, 2 of something else, 1 of something, etc etc in groups of 10 qualifying items.

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