FREE Gillette Fusion ProGlide Razor

GO HERE to claim a free ProGlide Razor for the man in your family. It comes with some high value coupons for later too. This razor has not been released in stores yet, but will be available after June 1. My guess is that CVS and/or Walgreens will have it free or almost free shortly after it arrives so paired with the coupon offered in this freebie should make for some free and better-than-free razors.

When I signed up there were only 265 razors left on that site.

If they are out when you go there, go to Moneysavingmom.com. She had a list of 29 different sites that were offering the free razors today!!

Another Paint Rebate - Lowes

Yesterday I told you about a pain rebate at Home Depot. Today there is one for Lowe's. So if you're buying a LOT of paint, you could use both!

Here are the details for Lowe's rebate:

Get $5 when you buy one gallon or $20 when you buy 5-gallon size Valspar Ultra premium, signature and Duramax Olimpic premium paint, wood protector stain or Zinsser primer. Purchases must be made 5/27-5/31. While supplies last.

I saw this advertised on their website, but did not see a printable rebate form like the Home Depot one. I assume you get your rebate form in the store. ??

CVS deals 05/30-06/05

I have today off work so I have had a lot more time to post the deals I've found.

This deal does not start until Monday, but just in case I don't have time to post it later I thought I'd better do it now.

There are 3 deals next week at CVS worth mentioning:

1) Ban Invisible Solid $2.99 (Limit 1)
Get $2 ECB
Use $1 from 4/18 SS
Final Price: Free!

2) Johnson & Johnson Reach Floss or Flossers B1G1 (priced at $1.99)
Use 2 $1 coupons from 4/11 RP or 5/16 RP
Final Price: 2 Free!

3)P&G Deal (Limit 1)
Buy $25, Get $10 ECB

•Charmin 16 pk (big rolls = 32 reg. rolls) $9.99 (Use $.25 from 5/2 P&G (exp 5/31!)

•Bounty Extra Soft 12 pk $12.99 (Use $.25 from 5/2 P&G (exp 5/31!)

•Duracell AAA, AA 10 pk, C, D 4 pk 9-Volt 2 pk $5.99

•Puffs Lotion or Ultra Soft $.99 (Use $1 or $.75 from Vocalpoint mailer)

Here is what I would do:
FIRST, go swipe your CVS card at the red machine. I have been getting a lot of $5/25 or $4/20 coupons printing lately, which REALLY sweetens this deal.
Buy 2 pks TP & $5 of puffs or batteries (if you need them, if not, buy 3 TP)
Give the cashier the $/$$ coupon FIRST, then other coupons you might have.
Then go back and buy another TP with the $10 ECB you just got (unless you want to save it, but I wouldn't this time)

I have mentioned this TP deal before as CVS did it a couple months ago. If you use a single roll for price comparison on TP, buying a total of 3 pks plus the 1 free one - $5/$25 order coupon (I include it because I have 2 of them and will use it) = $0.19/roll, which is a really good price for Charmin.

Please feel free to ask if you have any Q's!! If you are taking advantage of the pop sales right now you may well need extra TP too. :) just a thought.

I forgot to give credit where it was due for finding these deals so early! So thanks to Couponing for 4 for posting them today. She finds most of the Jewel deals I post too.

PAINT rebate

Home Depot is offering a rebate on paint this weekend. GO HERE to print your rebate form.

Get $5 back via mail when you buy one gallon of paint or $20 when you buy five gallons of Glidden, Behr paint or Flood stains. This offer is available on purchases done from 5/27-5/31. According to Common Sense with Money, it will be available for the 4th of July as well.

Joan Plattner, I stuck this on here for you :0) Hopefully a few others out there doing home updates this summer can take advantage of it too.

Scooped by a boy -- soda deal update

Alright. Sorry for the landslide of posts this morning, but I keep learning new things. I just called Dana (Nathan's brother) to tell him about the soda deals and he told me that WalMart has 24-packs for $3.88.

Now I am thinking about all the 12-pks I lugged around yesterday!!

I would still make the trip to Jewel for the Coke products -- $1.50 each PLUS the sausages. Awesome deal. But for PEPSI, I would absolutely scrap the others and hit WalMart.

SORRY FOR THE CONFUSION!! Apparently soda deals are running rampant this weekend.

$2 Coke Coupon Available!!

HOLD THE PHONE! If you are going to buy Coke products this week, the IGA has a coupon in their ad for $2 off any 4 12-packs. It is a MANUFACTURER'S coupon which means you can cut it out of the ad and use it anywhere!

So I would stop by your local IGA first, grab a handful of ads, then go to Jewel-Osco and buy 8 12-pks of Coke (which i don't even like - bummer it's not pepsi). Anyway, you can use the IGA coupon PLUS the Jewel coupon for the free Hillshire farms sausage in the previous post. So you will pay $12 OOP and get 8 12-pks AND 2 H.F. sausages! It really will not get cheaper than this for a long, long time.

This is "STOCK UP" time.

Have fun!

Soda/Pop Buying Time

To all people who drink soda/pop:

This is the time to buy it -- stores like to put soda on sale for Memorial Day. Here are the best places to shop:

If you like COKE products:
Go to Jewel-Osco.
4 12-pks for $8 AND they have a coupon (available on the ad you can pick up in the store)to get a free Hillshire Farms Smoked Sausage when you buy 4 Coke 12-pks.
*Limit 8

They also have PEPSI products 4/$8 -- limit 8

**The Jewel sale runs 05/27-06/02

But you can go back in and do it again if you want more than 8.

If you are specific to MOUNTAIN DEW:
Go to Target.
5 12-pks of any Pepsi product for $15, BUT you get a $5 Target Gift Card (makes it $2/each) AND there is a Mountain Dew coupon available HERE for $1/2 making it $1.50 per 12-pack. Look under "racing" to find the coupon quicker. That coupon is really the only thing that makes Target better than Jewel here. Unless you're buying for a huge event, because you are not limited at Target either.

Not that I am encouraging everyone to drink a lot of soda, but if you have an event coming up or if you (or your hubby) drinks one can each day with lunch, I would buy enough until at least Labor Day right now (or for the next year, depends on your storage space). I am in charge of food/drinks for our church High School Girls Camp so yesterday I went out and bought 42 12-packs of soda at $1.50-2 each. Plus I got a few smoked sausages out of it! :0)

**The Target sale runs ONLY UNTIL SATURDAY. Sorry for the late notice.

FREE Tropicana OJ - Today Only!

05/26/10 only you can GO HERE to sign up for Tropicana's Juicy Rewards program and request a coupon for a FREE container of Tropicana OJ. You will need to have 5 points in your account to request this coupon so here is a way to get your 5 points:

Take the survey = 1 point

Add the following codes: FBOOK-TROPI; MOMCE-NTRAL; TWMOM-READR; Blogg-Her11 = worth 1 point each.

They will mail you the coupon in the next 7-10 days.

I have been a member of their rewards program for a few months and have gotten 4 FREE containers of Tropicana OJ since I started. So if you like their OJ I would definitely recommend signing up for this program.

CVS 05/23-29

This week CVS only has one deal I am interested in, but it's a good one.

Old Spice or Gillette Body wash $4, Earn $4 ECBs (limit 2)
Use B1G1 Old Spice Body Wash 4/18/2010 RP (Red Plum) Insert or
Use B1G1 Free Gillette Product 5/2/2010 P&G Insert or
Use $4/2 Gillette Deodorant or Body Wash 5/2/2010 P&G Insert
FREE plus $4 in overage after coupon and ECBs

What an amazing deal! I happen to have a few of those coupons so I wish the limit was higher than two. It is a great chance to increase your ECBs. I only have $3 in ECB left so I will have to spend $1, but then I will get $8 in ECBs back so it will be well worth the $1!

There are a lot of other deals at CVS this week too, but you'll have to check their add for those or go to Commonsensewithmoney.com -- she has the full list of deals there.

Coupon Database Turtorial

Wow, I am excited about this one. My favorite coupon blogger, Moneysavingmom.com, just introduced a coupon database on her website yesterday. If you look at the top of my blog where I remind you to check out online coupon sources, you will see a new link to this database.

It is exactly what it sounds like -- a place where EVERY coupon out there is kept track of and then tells you when/where/how to get it.

The "default" view shows the 10 coupons most recently added onto the database. But there is also a search box where you can type in any product you want and it will tell you if there are any coupons available.

Now since this includes all coupons, you will not be able to print a lot of them as they were published in a newspaper insert, magazine or a retailer. But at least you will know exactly where the coupon surfaced if you want to try and track it down. The printable ones will usually have a blue highlight and you can click straight to the link from the database to print it.

Smartsource and Red Plum are both coupon inserts found in Sunday papers.

Once a coupon expires or is no longer available to print, it will be taken off the database to avoid confusion and frustration. That's the plan anyway, and I imagine these ladies will do a great job with it. They are adding new coupons daily right now as this is so new.

Feel free to ask if you have any Q's or have trouble using the database because when a new, good coupon surfaces I will likely direct you there instead of always posting the link, it will depend how much time I have.

Huggies for $4.49 @ Kroger

Kroger has a promotion this week on Huggies where if you spend $15 on Huggies products you automatically get $3 off your order.

So buy two packs of diapers for $8.99 each, use two $3 coupons (previous post), they will take another $3 off = $4.49 per pack. Now I would not go crazy on this deal because I prefer to spend around $3 for a pack of diapers, but if you are going through a lot of diapers and don't have much time to shop around & really prefer Huggies brand, then this might be the time for you to stock up.

$3/1 Huggies Coupons

If you buy diapers, make sure to go to coupons.com soon to print out your $3/1 Huggies coupons! There are two on there right now and you can print each one twice giving you 4 new $3 coupons!!

Also check HERE for two more. **Make sure you hit your browser's back button 3 times from the "Thank you for printing" screen to print a second coupon. If my link does not work for you, go to Moneysavingmom.com, which is where I found this link.

A third spot to possibly score another high value Huggies coupon is Facebook. I haven't checked it out myself, but I heard if you are a fan of Huggies on Facebook you can print a $3 coupon from there. Hope these work!!!

WATCH YOUR RECEIPT !

I know I said I would not be posting anything else until next week, but Nathan is sleeping & we had a grocery store experience I wanted to share with you.

First of all, I ALWAYS watch my cashier ring up my items or at the very least I check every item on the receipt before I drive home -- and here is why:

We wanted to buy some bread, ham, cheese & eggs for a few breakfasts & lunch while here. Publix is the local grocery store near my parents place so we went there. They had some deli ham on sale BOGO (buy 1 get 1) priced at $5.39 so we grabbed two, the rest of our stuff and checked out. I was busy talking to the cashier and paid the total of $25 and grabbed our bags. Nathan stood there looking at the receipt and asked if the ham wasn't supposed to be BOGO because they both rang up at $5.39. Since we already paid we had to go to Customer Service, but the policy at Publix is if they ring something up wrong, you get it free. AND since the item was a BOGO, we got them BOTH FREE. She handed me $10.78 back so all of our groceries only ended up costing $15. just because Nathan was paying attention.

In our area, Kroger has the "scan right guarantee" meaning they will give the first item to you free and any identical items rung up wrong will be adjusted to the correct price -- still a fantastic deal and worth watching. Because of this, Kroger almost always rings up right, which is nice.

IGA almost ALWAYS rings up something wrong for me. Scandalous since it is always in their favor too. BUT, I do shop there since it is close-by, the cashiers are friendly enough and they will fix the incorrect item. You don't get it free with them, but they will give you the difference back. It saves time to catch it at the register before you pay, especially since it is usually less than $1, & my time is worth something too.

So, my lesson for this week is WATCH YOUR RECEIPTS! Sometimes you will be overpaying by a lot more than you think.

Taking a Break

Well, about 3 hours ago Nathan surprised me with a trip to Florida for the weekend. In fact, I am typing this on the airplane :0) Since I will not be doing much shopping over the next 4 days I will most likely not make any more posts until next week some time. Hope you all have a great weekend!!

Sending sun from FL ~~
Laura

0.50/1 Quick Cook Pasta

There is a coupon available for $0.50/1 Quick Cook Pasta. You can choose between Ronzoni, Creamette, American Beauty, Skinner or San Giorgio brands. I know Kroger carries both Ronzoni & Creamette. Especially if used at Kroger where they will double the coupon to $1, this means really cheap or FREE pasta.

Kroger 05/13-19

This is just a heads-up that the Kroger sales starting tomorrow are basically the same as this week -- so no need to rush out and buy things you couldn't get to over the past 6 days.

So unless something new strikes me, I will not post on Kroger again until next week.

Feel free to visit Moneysavingmom.com for a full list of the Kroger deals this week. She has about 6 different Kroger ads detailed, so make sure you choose the central one for the right days, prices, etc...

IGA 05/9-15

OK. I've been a bit slow on this week's IGA sales -- the CVS ones were just better!

There are a few things I would buy at IGA this week if I needed them:

1.29 - IGA vegetable blends - This is a REALLY good price for these veggies. We love California blend & Italian style veggies here so I will buy about 10 at this price. I should probably get more, but I can't remember how low they got last year.

0.99- IGA brand spaghetti sauce, salad dressing & ketchup (a decent price for any of them)

$1.99 butter - a good price to buy 2-3, but I wouldn't stock up.

0.79 - IGA marshmallows

0.99 - napkins

0.88 - white bread

3.99 - watermelon -- this TOTALLY depends on the size of the melon & i have not seen them yet.

1.69 - IGA seasoned french fries (great for french fry casserole!! - i will buy 1)

That's it for the IGA in my opinion this week -- fortunately there is some produce in there! It would be tough to get by on marshmallows, white bread & napkins for the week. :0)

Where do I get my coupons?

I have had a few people ask where I get my coupons since we do not have a newspaper subscription.

Good question! Most of them are printed from online sites (like coupons.com, smartsource, redplum & manufacture websites).

Although I get a larger quantity of coupons online, the HIGHEST VALUE coupons come inside SAMPLES I sign up for. Walmart's website is probably the best site for samples and almost all of them come with high value coupons ($1 or more). Their site is the most user-friendly too, meaning you don't even have to give them your e-mail address if you don't want to. I sign up for quite a few online samples, but I am careful and NEVER give out my real birthday and I would recommend setting up a special e-mail account just for samples because some of them require you to receive monthly newsletters etc... and this will keep you from junking up your regular account.

I do get samples from all sorts of random places, but the best spots to check regularly are:

WalMart's sample site

Spoofee (an online freebie forum - thank-you Kerstan :)

and All You - a magazine website that loves freebies

All You magazine itself is also full of high value coupons, but again, I do not have a subscription myself.

Since you might go and check these sites, I HIGHLY recommend signing up for the Secret Clinical Strength sample on WalMart's website. That is THE BEST deodorant I have ever used and am so excited to get another free one! Good samples like that one often only last a day or two and then they're gone. Another tip for WalMart's samples: once you receive a sample in the mail you are out of their system and can sign up for it again as long as it is still available, or becomes available again.

Besides, samples make getting the mail WAY more fun :0) I probably receive samples on average 2-3 days a week.

Lastly, I will occasionally buy a newspaper if I hear there are going to be 3 inserts in it - like May 2nd had the high value coupons from a P&G insert, plus 2 other inserts, so I did buy a paper that day. And it has paid off big-time!! But that's it!

Hope you find something fun to sign up for today :0)

Dollar General - Free Body Wash for Men

Dollar General has Gillette Body Wash on sale for $2 right now. Buy 3 and use the $4/2 coupon from the 5/2 P&G insert plus the Buy One, Get One Free coupon from the 5/2 P&G insert to get all three for free!

Wow. This is a great deal since most of us live pretty close to a D.G. I just got some of this body wash free at CVS last week and it smells pretty good :0)

Now all you need to do is hunt down someone who gets a newspaper to see if they still have the Proctor & Gamble insert!

CVS sales 05/9 - 05/15

** Read my previous post on how to shop CVS if you are new to it **

This week is a great week to start earning ECBs as there are a lot of "free after ECB" items offered.

Here is the order I would buy them:

1) U By Kotex Liners 50-60ct, Pads 14-18 ct or Tampons 18ct $4.99 Earn 4.99 ECBs Limit 1
Use $1/1 Kotex U Product Kotex U Product printable
Use $1/1 CVS Printable (use one CVS coupon AND one Manufacturer coupon)
You will spend $2.99, but will get 4.99 ECB back for your next purchase

2) Right Guard or Dry Idea $2.49 Earn 2 ECBs Limit 2 (get both)
Use the $3/2 coupon I told you about last week

Crest Pro Health Toothpaste or Rinse $3.50, Earn 3.50 ECBs Limit 2 (but just buy one with this transaction)
Use 0.75 coupon from the 05/02 P&G insert

Your total will be $5.70 after coupons, but then give them the 4.99 ECB from the Kotex and you will only spend 0.71 OOP AND still get another $7.50 ECB for next time!

Depending on your house hold needs, you will now either leave the store saving that 7.50 ECB for next week or you can get something else you need that will also generate more ECBs. Other items offered this week are:

Reach Floss Mint Flavor 55 yard $1.99, Earn $2 ECBs when you buy one (limit 2)
Use $1/1 Reach Floss or Toothbrush
I will actually find a way to add this one in as it is a "money maker"

Huggies, Pull-Ups or Goodnights Diapers $8.49, Earn 2 ECBs Limit 1
use 1.50 huggies coupon from mailers or newspaper inserts

Pantene Shampoo and Conditioner 2/$6.97 Earn 3 ECBs Limit 1
Use $1/2 coupon from 04/25 paper insert if you have it.

EXTRAS - Here are a few items offered this week that will be free w/coupons that are not ECB deals:

Bayer 32 ct. $1
Use $1/1 Bayer Product printable

CVS Brand shampoo $0.99
Use $1/1 CVS brand hair care coupon printing at the coupon scanner this week
FREE after coupon (Thanks CSWM!)

The free CVS shampoo makes a great donation item.

Well, I think that's it. This week is a little more step-by-step than I will usually do. I just want you to see a little more clearly how to shop there. I hope this helps. Next week I hope to do the same kind of post, and maybe the week after, but then I will back off and just list the deals hoping you will know best how to fit them in with the ECB's you have saved and your family's needs.

CVS -- How To Shop There

Since a lot of us live far enough away from a WalMart, but have a CVS so close by, I think we should all learn how to shop at CVS. WHAT??? Obviously we all know how to shop, but CVS (and Walgreens) have their own systems and can almost be more like "playing their game" than shopping. Every week they offer certain products for "free" with their ECB program. So first I will explain the program:

You need to go in and sign up for an Extra Care Card. You will scan that card each time you shop there and with certain purchases it will generate an Extra Care Buck (ECB) or a few ECB's. The best way to work these stores is to start small to reduce the amount of money you would spend out of pocket (OOP). Each week when I shop there, I use ECB's I got from the previous week's purchases so I pay VERY LITTLE OOP and then leave the store with new ECB's to use the next week. The goal is to pay for new products with the store's money instead of my own. Another way to look at ECBs is kind of like a rebate, but it is instant and only redeemable in that store.

There is a RED machine inside each CVS that you need to go to first when you enter the store. Scan your Extra Care Card and it will print out coupons for items in the store. Make sure to scan it 2-3 times as new coupons will print.

CVS has a few great features in that you can combine a sale price item with a manufacture coupon (printed online or from a newspaper or magazine) AND use a CVS store coupon too (found HERE). This makes for some very inexpensive items.

Usually when I shop CVS I do NOT take all my items to the register, ring them through and pay. It is usually 2 or 3 transactions so I have less money spent OOP and can use ECB's from the previous purchases. Like I said, the goal is to spend less of your own money and more of theirs. So I do take all the items up at once to save my time, but I tell the cashier it will be a few transactions. They really are used to this and it is NOT a big deal. Eureka CVS cashiers are very coupon friendly. Washington is hit and miss.

Well, Nathan is waiting for me to go work in the garden so I'm off. I will come back later and explain this week's deals and how I will purchase them. HAVE FUN! THis is NOT as complicated as it sounds, but it works best to know all their secrets to make the most of shopping there.

Tropicana $1 coupon, take 2

OK, let's try this one again. You need to send a mother's day card to someone then you (and the person you send it to) can print out a $1 coupon.

Send your mother's day card

Let's see if it works this way!

Printable coupons

OK. So today I have had two people tell me they could not print coupons from my links. Can anyone tell me if they have successfully printed the Nestle, Tropicana or All coupons? I am trying to figure out if it is their computers or my links that are struggling.

Thanks for the feedback!

I got those three coupons after performing a "task" on their respective websites so if you cannot print from my link, try going to the actual websites to see if you can find the coupon on there. Sorry for the inconvenience and I will try to have FUNCTIONAL links coming up now! Like I said, this is a learning process for me too.

$1/1 Nestle Coupon

***UPDATE****

The link I have on the bottom of this one is not working right. It says "print limit reached" even for people who have never printed any coupons before. If you want this coupon, you will have to go to Nestle's Website, sign up for their "club", click on "special offers" in the upper right corner, then the opportunity for coupons will be in there. Sorry, I was trying to avoid these steps for you, but it didn't work.
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WOO-HOO! am I excited about this one!! I went to the IGA yesterday for the 3-day sale and noticed the Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough was on sale 2/$3, which is a decent price for cookie dough and in a weak moment I bought one. So this morning I thought, hmmmm, there just has to be a coupon out there somewhere for these! 10 minutes later, voila -- $1 off any ONE package which will make them 0.50 each at IGA! Trust me when I say you cannot MAKE it that cheap. I always make my own cookies from scratch, but at this price I will buy a couple and stick in the freezer for hot cookies w/ice cream this summer. Don't tell the kids because we usually do this AFTER they are in bed.

So, PRINT YOURS HERE Eureka IGA even had sugar cookie dough which would make a great fruit pizza too. Man I wish I could print more than 2. I think I will call my mom and ask her to print some too :0)

$3/2 Right Guard

Coupons.com has a new $3/2 Right Guard deodorant coupon out. Print it now and save it for next week where it will be a MONEY MAKER at CVS. CVS will have it on sale for $2.99 each with a $2 ECB given for each one. So you will spend $2.98 after the coupon and get back $4 ECB for your next purchase. Yay! This is nathan's favorite deodorant anyway. I am sure he loves that I share stuff like that publicly :0)

$1/1 Tropicana coupon

Wow! Tropicana has been very generous with coupons lately! I think it is on sale at Kroger for $2.38 which would make for some cheap high-quality OJ.

TROPICANA COUPON

$1 ALL coupon

Here is a link for a new coupon $1/1 All Oci-Active detergent

Should make for a decent deal at WalMart.

E-mail notices for The Farmer's Wife

Well I FINALLY figured out how to let people "subscribe" to this blog -- meaning you can get an e-mail after I post something which is usually more convenient than remembering to check through the day. Check along the right side of the blog under the "about me" section and there should be a place to click on that says "subscribe".

Sorry about the delay with this. I am really not very computer savvy and there are more learning curves to a blog than I thought. So strange how my job and main hobby both are on the Internet, but if something doesn't go just right i have NO CLUE how to fix it! That is where I am so thankful to have two very capable brother-in-laws nearby who are very computer-savvy.

Also, I put up a permanent link to Swagbucks on the side-bar. Hopefully soon I will also get links to the coupon-printing websites over there. May as well make use of the space if it's there, right??

I have been working on my "price book", but noticed that the items on there are things that I buy. Duh. I would be happy to include items your family buys, if different than mine, but you'll have to let me know what you're looking for. Also, if I know what you like to buy I can let you know when there is a good sale or deal on those items. You can either comment on any post (I am still learning about those too) or you can e-mail me at natewieg@hotmail.com.

Nexcare $1/1 coupon

There is a new $1/1 PDF coupon hosted by Nexcare's website, which means you can legitimately print it as many times as you like. My favorite type of coupon!!

Target has travel size packages of Nexcare for $1 making it free, or you can buy a regular size box for 0.77 with this coupon. I am sure WalMart would have a good price on their boxes too. Anyway, it doesn't expire until September so just save to your computer and use it later if you want. Since I just bought 2 boxes of Bandaids that is what I will be doing.

Lands' End deal

My sister Sandy has great luck shopping Lands' End online for her kids tennis shoes, sandals and some clothes at REALLY GOOD PRICES. So she probably already knows about this deal, but it was new to me.

There are a lot of items on clearance right now PLUS you can get free shipping on ANY purchase, no minimum, using the code SHELLS and pin 2926.

I will be checking it out myself here shortly.

Lands' End

STOCK-UP SERIES

All-right. Consider this lesson #1 of my "stock-up series" where I will hopefully give some direction on what prices are good, and when they are so great you should really stock up.

First I will give you an insight on how I shop: I try to never pay the price a grocery store puts on an item (other than perishables: milk, eggs, fresh fruit etc). I buy things at a price I like, when it's on sale so later I don't have to pay the store's high price. Does that make sense? There is a reason I entered the medical field instead of teaching!! My pantry is usually FULL of something -- it varies based on recent sales -- right now it is granola bars & cereal. A few months ago was goldfish crackers, nut clusters & fruit snacks. I also have 50 1/2-gallon containers of Mott's apple juice in the laundry room. It keeps things interesting around here :) But I shop based on a "stockpile" method keeping cost down.

When I offer you my opinion of a "good price", I would buy a few only if I need them. A "stock-up price" is when I buy enough to last 3-6 months or longer depending on just how low the price is. For example, the amount of apple juice I have on hand should last us a year, the price was 0.99 each which is almost unheard of for Mott's and is getting hard to find even for generic apple juice these days.

My goal is at the end of this series to compile all the prices onto one price sheet that you can print out and take with you or write down in your own "price book". I used to have a price book, do not have one right now, but hope to start one again this week. I have a feeling the one I used when we first got married telling me to buy cheese at 0.50 would not really help these days!

So for today I am addressing TOILET PAPER. This may be a weed-out course as TP is one of the toughest things to price shop. There are so many different sizes, textures, thicknesses, 1-ply, 2-ply, you get the idea. I am going to talk in terms of a "single roll" so if you buy doubles, multiply by the correct number. I did a lot of research this morning and found a few things:

~~ Some people buy TP based on roll price, others use price per square foot. 0.01/sq. ft. is one price I found, but I like the price per roll idea better, so will go with that.

~~ 0.25/roll is a common price for Angle Soft - it can be purchased $1 for a 4-pk most days at WalMart. But Angel Soft isn't exactly high quality TP so if you find Charmin, Scott, Cottonelle or your favorite brand for that price or less, I would consider it a good price.

GOOD PRICE FOR HIGH QUALITY TP = 0.25/roll
STOCK UP PRICE = 0.15 to 0.20/roll

Recently CVS had a P&G (proctor & gamble) deal on Charmin so I got 48 "big" rolls (96 regular) for $19.75 OOP which breaks down to 20.5 cents per roll. I do consider 96 rolls of TP to be stocking up, so apparently I stocked up a little over the 0.20/roll, but it was close!!! Charmin is my fave so I thought it was worth it.

Well, if you made it to the bottom of this post, YOU PASSED! I promise you the rest of the prices I give you will be WAY, WAY, WAY easier to follow & keep track of. If you have a better method for finding cheap TP, let me know! :)

SWAGBUCKS

So, I got a question about "Swagbucks" today. In case you have never heard of it, Swagbucks is a search engine on the web (much like google or yahoo) that gives you prizes for web surfing! I do web searches a lot for my job to look up terms I don't already know and so far I have earned enough swagbucks to redeem a $10 gift card to Barnes & Noble, Starbucks or $10 cash deposited to my Paypal account. Not too bad considering I would have done the searching anyway! I figure I may as well let them "pay" me for it :0) They actually use a combination of google & a few other search engines so you get the same results you would w/o using it.

If you do not already use Swagbucks, I would sure recommend it! It does not use ANYTHING harmful to your computer or we wouldn't be using it.

PLEASE SIGN UP HERE if you want to set up a new account and we both get a "gift" from Swagbucks. I don't know what it is since I have never referred anyone before, but something is almost always better than nothing.

I do not have the whole huge toolbar downloaded on my computer (takes up too much of my smalll screen space), but I do have a small search box on my address bar. So whenever I perform a search, I make sure I enter it into that box instead of my Google box and VERY OFTEN I earn Swagbucks. It's always kind of fun when they pop up. Try it and you'll see!

IGA May 2-8

Here are my thoughts on the IGA this week:

there is a 3-day sale this coming weekend with a few decent deals. we do not buy charcoal (have a gas grill) but if you are going to buy the $9.99 Kingsford charcoal print out this coupon to also get a free glad product (i LOVE the free stuff!) :0)

If you are not picky about your laundry detergent, $1.49 for the Xtra liquid is a great price.

$1.69 boneless pork loin is also a great price (even being a hog farmer with our own meat, we buy it at this price!!) **NOTE FROM NATHAN: pork cannot even be produced for $1.69/lb which is why we buy at this price - it freezes great and can be made into butterfly chops or smaller roasts later. I have seen it for $1.49/lb, but not often enough to wait for it. If you like boneless pork loin, now is the time to buy it.

2/$4 milk - obviously a great price these days

$1.98 prarie farms 1/2 gallon - use 0.75 coupon from last weekends insert makes for some cheap ice cream! Even w/o the coupon it is a decent price (I like $4/gal or less)

Other sale items for this week:

$1.19 prarie farms sour cream or dip - only if you have .30 coupon from last week

kind of sad, but that is all I see for this week.

CVS

Here is the best of CVS for May 2-8:

SoBe Lifewater on sale BOGO free
Use BOGO coupon here to get BOTH FREE! :) (remember to hit your "back" button to print twice)

Gillette Venus razor - 9.79
use $3 coupon in today's paper
get $6 ECB back
= 0.79 razor