Food Lion Fun....Again

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Every Sunday we have downtime between leaving CVS and waiting for Rite Aid to open (aka Coupon Halftime).   This past Sunday we decided to hit up Food Lion and do the "Big Deal" one more time.  For those of you who missed what we did at Food Lion last week, click here.  (hint: we saved 71% that trip!)

I had one $1 off All detergent coupon left and the Sunday paper brought some great Milo's Kitchen dog treat coupons.  Dog treats are difficult to get on a good sale so we were super excited as I'm sure the dogs are excited as well.  We used some Kraft dressings as a filler item to get ten total items.

In total we got one 32 oz All Free & Clear detergent (our favorite brand), five Milo's Kitchen dog treats, and 4 Kraft dressings.  The big deal took $5 dollars off the total purchase automatically.  Combined with coupons I got all this for $7.03 (that is with tax included).  Just to give you an idea of how much we saved the Milo's Kitchen dog treats are regularly $2.99, if we had purchased 5 of those without coupons, the dog treats alone would have been $14.95 before tax. 

The idea is to stock up where you can.  Our dogs love treats.  There was a time and we would just run into Wal-Mart when the treats were out and pick up some more, hardly even looking at the price and we certainlyy didn't have a coupon.  Makes me sick to think of all the money we were throwing away. 

Always look at the coupons you have and see if any of them match up with current sale prices.  A good rule of thumb I use is this:  If I can get a name brand cheaper than the equivalent store brand and it is an item I need, I get it.  If I absolutely need it now and the store brand is the cheapest that is what I go with and I save the coupon for another day.  Even if that coupon is about to expire go with the cheaper price, I promise you will get that coupon again.

When you are out and about shopping, don't forget to look at unit price.  If your coupon does not specify size, the better deal may be to buy 2 small boxes rather than one large box (note: this is where multiples of a coupon come in handy).  

The discussion of unit price brings me to my third and final tip, ALWAYS bring your calculator (a little $1 dollar calculator will do - you just need the 4 basic functions).  Please don't ever be embarrassed to walk around with your coupon notebook and calculator, people are usually intrigued by a couponer and want to know how you save so much!

Happy couponing!