Get all the details of my weekly grocery haul for our family of 6! I show you how I paid less than $22 for almost $200 worth of groceries thanks to coupons, store sales and coupon app savings.
Some of you have wondered where I get my printable coupons. Here are the main coupon sites that I use: Coupons.com, Smart Source, Ibotta, and Fetch Rewards. Manufacturer websites and Facebook pages are also great sources.
Before I dive into the actual details of my latest weekly grocery haul, I feel like there a few things that I should clarify about the way that I grocery shop, just so this post makes more sense.
* It’s pretty important to understand a bit about how I shop. I do something called stockpile shopping. This simply means that when I see an item at rock bottom prices that I regularly use or know that I can use, I’ll buy several of it. This might seem kind of crazy, but it honestly saves me hundreds of dollars a year!
Simply put, by buying 6 bags of frozen veggies when I can get them for $0.50/bag with a coupon and sale instead of paying the full price of $1.50, I save $6.00. These savings add up pretty quickly! Want to know more about this kind of shopping? Check out my post on How to Start Building a Grocery Stockpile.
This is also why just by looking at the things I purchase here it might look a little strange and hard to imagine how I actually create decent, balanced meals. But remember, I have a small stockpile of lots of pantry, freezer and even fridge items that I purchased previously when they were a great price and I’m pulling from them to create our frugal menus too!
* I also buy a lot of meats and veggies in bulk. The meat I either can or freeze and then obviously have it on hand whenever I need it. I purchase large quantities of fruits and veggies when they are in season and I can get them at really great prices. By canning or freezing them, I save a lot and we are able to enjoy great produce for less cost all year long. I do still buy some fresh fruits and veggies too.
This definitely helps me get better deals, although I have to say that even before we moved to Philadelphia and I shopped at stores that didn’t fully double, I still often got very similar deals. So getting great deals still is possible even without fully doubled coupons!
* The Load to Card coupons that you see mentioned below can be found on the grocery store’s website when you create an account with your store card. I think most major grocery stores have this option any more and it’s a great way to save a little extra.
I typically just go into my account and clip all the coupons, that way if I happen to buy something that I hadn’t planned on buying and it had a Load to Card coupon available, I’ll get the savings. And that has happened quite a few times!
* The best way to maximize your savings is to combine sales with coupons and to combine multiple coupons on the same product. But I want to be clear- you can only use one manufacturer coupon per item. In other words, say you have two printable coupons for Butterball ground turkey, you can only use one.
(You can easily tell if it’s a manufacturer’s coupon by looking at the top of the coupon for that wording. Almost all coupons are manufacturer coupons.)
* Under no circumstances is it legal to photocopy a coupon. For printable coupons, most manufacturer’s let you print two coupons per computer and then your limit will be capped.
* Coupon availability changes all the time, so the links that I share below will soon be out of date and not take you to the exact coupon that I linked too. I’m sorry about that, but it’s just how coupons work!
Now on to the specifics of my weekly grocery haul….
Basically, I got ALL the groceries that you see below for just $21.23 total, after all coupons and savings! That’s more than $197.00 worth of groceries for just a little over $21! I have not had a shopping trip this great in a LONG time and it was so fun.
As a side note, you regular readers know that I usually shop at Shoprite as well. They recently changed their coupon policy and you can no longer combine a manufacturer coupon with a digital store coupon and as a result, the deals have been really sparse there lately. Most weeks I don’t bother taking the time to shop there since the one or two deals that I could get don’t really make it worth the trip. I was sad that they changed their policy, but I’ve been able to do really well at Giant lately and because of my stockpile, it hasn’t really hurt my budget much at all so far.
Total Spent: $127.58
Total Saved with Coupons: $51.64
Total Saved with Sales: $55.50
Total Saved: $107.14 + an additional $72.50 in gas savings
Aldi: $3.36
I had planned to get a few more items at Aldi but they were out of stock on a lot of items (one of the not so great things about living in a big city), so I’ll have to try and get them next week.
Giant: $124.22
Total Saved with Coupons: $51.64
Total Saved with Sales: $55.50 + an additional $72.50 in gas savings
These Giant deals will be good through 6/20/19, so if you shop before that, you should be able to these same deals yourself.
What a great week to shop at Giant! There were so many good deals, although my favorite was probably the diapers.
I got the Pampers diapers for $3.95 total or just $0.79 a pack!! That’s the least that I’ve paid for diapers in years. My son is in size 5 and I pretty much never buy Swaddlers because there are fewer diapers per package compared to Huggies Snug and Dry or Pampers Baby Dry. But with this deal, it was clearly worth it!
This Pampers deal combined several offers, which is key for getting great savings like this. First of all, I took advantage of a $10 instant savings when you buy $30 worth of Pampers deal that Giant is doing right now. On top of that, there is a $10 catalina coupon (prints at the register and can be used on your next purchase of anything at Giant) that is printing currently at Giant when you buy Pampers Swaddlers. From what I’ve read, no one is quite sure what the details are for the actual catalina, but it seems like if you buy five packs of Pampers Swaddlers, it will print. I decided to take the risk and see if it worked because even without it, the price would be good. Thankfully, it worked like a charm and printed for me! So with those two offers, I saved $20 alone.
I also printed two $2.00 coupons from the Pampers website plus I used a $2.00 Giant digital coupon that I had loaded to my Giant bonus card. In addition, there is a $3.00 Pampers Swaddlers offer on Ibotta that can be redeemed up to five times. Those savings combined with the previous $20 gave me $41 total savings on the diapers!
The Felsnaptha and Scotch packing tape were two items that weren’t on sale but that we needed. The Felsnaptha works wonders on stains. I always use that first and if that doesn’t get the stain out, then I try soaking the item in Oxi-clean. But most times the Felsnaptha alone takes care of it.
I don’t typically buy anything other than cow’s milk, but some of you regular readers know that if I can get other kinds of milk inexpensively, I’ll go ahead and buy it and we’ll use it on our granola and in smoothies etc. The Quaker Oat milk was part of this weeks gas reward deals. When you bought four bottles, you got $12.50 in gas savings, plus I had a $1.00 Giant digital coupon that I used as well. I bought 6 bottles and paid $0.13 for four of them and $0.38 for the other two. At that price I felt like I couldn’t go wrong since it’s much cheaper than the $3.80 that regular 2% milk costs here in Pennsylvania!
The Chobani Gimmies were also part of the same gas rewards deals as the Quaker Oat milk. Since you needed to buy the items in increments of four, I bought 6 of the Chobani and 6 of the Quaker milk to do a total of 3 gas deals. (I hope that makes sense! I realize it can sound pretty confusing if you aren’t familiar with how it works and I try my hardest to explain it as thoroughly as possible, but still….)
Because of the Chobani Ibotta offers as well as the gas savings, I ended up actually making $3.75 for purchasing the Chobani items! I typically make my own homemade yogurt, but if I can make money on store-bought yogurt, especially store-bought yogurt that doesn’t have all sorts of unnatural ingredients in it, then I will definitely buy it!
The Sara Lee bread, Stoehmann bread and Crisco were also a gas reward deal. Buying those six items got me $10.00 back in gas savings plus I had a $1.00 Criso oil Giant digital coupon that I used as well. That made the Crisco oil a money maker of $0.17 and the bread was just $0.82 each.
I was also really excited to get Polly-O string cheese for a just $0.38 a pack! It was another gas rewards deal and I got $25.00 back in gas savings when I purchased 8 packs. I don’t usually buy string cheese because it’s typically more expensive than blocks of cheese, but I love stocking up when I find a great deal like this! We’re going to taking a number of short trips this summer and these will be so helpful for lunches or snacks when we travel.
The WTRMLN WTR and SanGiorgio pasta were both small moneymakers after sales and Ibotta rebates. I made $0.50 on the WTRMLN WTR and $0.30 on the pasta.
The Chi-chi tortillas were a moneymaker of $1.84 after combining coupons and sales. Tortillas usually have a long expiration date but they also freeze well too, so even if we don’t use these for a bit, it shouldn’t be a problem.
I usually try to buy the 16 oz. containers of Spring mix at Aldi since it’s $1.49 cheaper there. But Aldi was totally out of it when I stopped by this week, so I ended up buying it at Giant. We also needed carrots and the 5 lb. bag is always the best price. I went ahead and got bananas too to take my total up to $10 so I could use a $1.00 off a $10.00 produce purchase Giant coupon that I had received in the mail. I love when I can save on produce like that!
BOUGHT:
- 5 Pampers Swaddlers $8.99 each
– used (2) $2.00 Pampers Swaddlers printable coupons (from the Pampers website)
– used $2.00 Pampers Giant load to card digital coupons
– submitted for (5) $3.00 Ibotta Pampers Swaddlers offers
– saved $10 instantly for purchasing $30 worth of Pampers products - Felsnaptha $1.39
- Scotch packing tape $3.74
- 6 Quaker Oat Milk $3.50 each
– used $1.00 Quaker Oat Giant load to card digital coupons - 2 Sara Lee bread $2.49 each
- 3 Stroehmann bread $2.49 each
- Crisco canola oil $2.50
– used $1.00 Crisco Giant load to card digital coupon - 3 Chobani Gimmies yogurt tubes $3.50 each
– submitted for (3) $1.00 Ibotta Chobani yogurt tubes offers - 3 Chobani Gimmies yogurt milkshakes $3.50 each
– submitted for (3) $1.00 Ibotta Chobani yogurt milkshake offers - WTRMLN WTR $3.49
– used FREE Watermelon Water Giant Load to Card digital coupon ($3.99)
– submitted for $0.50 Ibotta WTRMLN WTR offer - San Giorgio Homestyle pasta $1.69
– submitted for $1.99 Ibotta San Giorgio Homestyle pasta offer - 8 Polly-O string cheese $3.50 each
- 8 Chi-chi’s tortillas $0.99 each (on sale for buy one, get one free, so the price was technically $1.99 for one and then the other was free)
– used $1.00/3 Chi-chi’s products Giant load to card digital coupon
– used (8) $0.55 Chi-chi printable coupons (doubled to $1.10 each) - Nature’s Promise organic Spring mix $5.00
- 5 lb. Giant brand carrots $3.49
- bananas $1.69 ($0.49/lb.)
OTHER COUPON USED:
- used $5/$50 Giant grocery purchase coupon that came in the mail
- used $1/$10 Giant produce coupon that came in the mail
GOT BACK:
- $0.10 Ibotta any receipt offer
- $10.00 Catalina coupon for purchasing the Pampers (coupon that prints at the register and can be used on any future purchase)
- $10.00 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Sara Lee, Stroehmann and Crisco items
- $25.00 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Polly-O
- $12.50 in gas reward savings for purchasing the four Chobani items
- $12.50 in gas reward savings for purchasing the two Chobani items and two Quaker oat milk
- $12.50 in gas reward savings for purchasing four Quaker oat milk
- 264 pts. (the equivalent of $0.26) via Fetch Rewards for purchasing the Polly-O items (use code GEOEG at sign-up for $2.00 in points!)
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Amy
We live outside Philly. I shop these stores as well. But my favorite couponing store in the area is Acme. They double coupons up to .99 cents so when i see a loss leader and have coupons for it – no brainer, stock up time!
Lydia Beiler
Interesting! That’s great that you can do well there. It’s always a good feeling to know you’re saving money, isn’t it? I always felt like Acme was just pricier overall. But maybe it was just that I didn’t know a good coupon matchup site for Acme to help me find the good deals?
Gale
What do you mean by groceries? Is it pure food items or does it include paper products, cleaning supplies, kitchen utensils etc. Thank you.
ThriftyFrugalMom
Yes, our grocery budget includes non-food items too- paper products, cleaning supplies, diapers and basic toiletries like soap, shampoo and feminine hygiene products and that sort of thing. Basically, any of the typical items that I buy at the grocery store.