My Two Cents

Although I've cut down our grocery bill from $120/week to $80/week (would be $60/week if it weren't for the darn packets) I've been waaaay busy and have gotten behind on my couponing. My goal is to get the bill down to $60 a week once the school year starts. That being said, a fantastic scenario fell into my lap today and I had to take advantage of it, busy or not!

So, here's how it rolled out:
Back in May I bought 40 Duracell batteries for roughly $18 from Staples. It was AFTER the purchase that I realized I would be getting a $20 store credit, not a mail in rebate. I was annoyed, as we never shop at Staples, but whatever. We needed the batteries and I figured we'd buy toner there when we needed it.

This past weekend I had seen some awesome items for sale at Staples but was annoyed that I hadn't received my rebate yet, as this would be the time to use them.

Fast forward to today, Staples sent me a $20 rewards coupon in the mail. Now, I have to really give kudos to Staples here. Apparently they'd already e-mailed me the coupons, but I hadn't redeemed them yet, so they sent me paper copies telling my they were about to expire!

After doing some quick math, I made a list of everything I could get without having to pay out of pocket (ie under $20), loaded up Samantha and headed to the store.

Now, can you pick out the error in that last sentence? No? It's the part where I loaded up Samantha. She could have stayed home with daddy, but I decided to get her out of the house. I need to remember that this is my hobby and doing such silly things as bringing my daughter along makes it stressful. Like giving me many false alarms so I'll race her to the bathroom, only to have her sit on the toilet with her hollering "No!....No!....No!"

She's not peeing, protesting, or even answering a question. She's just fascinated about her echo in the stalls.

Anyway, where was I?

So I loaded the following in the cart:

and the total was $20.02

That's right! My .02 really is worth something!

All along I was thinking this was only going to give me more store credit- but when I got home I realized that I'm actually going to get a rebate check for $13.98!

Summary: 40 batteries, 2 reams of paper, 2 paper hole punches, 4 highlighters, 2 dry-erase marker boards, 200 note cards, 5 RSVP pens for $4.04 out of pocket.

Lesson Learned: do not take child to Staples