My Publix Shop - Paid $0.34 plus tax, Saved $75.32

I haven't posted a Publix shop for a long time, but that doesn't mean I haven't been couponing and shopping. I guess other things are keeping me busy besides this blog so it's going to be a little sparse for a while.

As usual, things are always changing with the coupon world - mergers, new limits, new policies, new scams and new couponers. There seem to be a ton more people couponing and I have joined some facebook groups to keep up with all the deals. There are a lot of newbies who don't know any better and abuse coupons. There are a bunch of old timers who know the nuances of couponing and have their contacts so they can pair up and abuse the system. The stores are getting smarter and trying to stay one step ahead of the scammers. Everyone is pushing the limits to see what they can get by with. Everyone has a favorite store, a favorite cashier and a coupon connection to get what they need. If you don't, you're left in the dust of the empty shelves with no product. It always has been a little complicated and not for everyone, it takes a lot of time and organization and effort. You can not shop once a week or less and hope to be a successful couponer. I guess I'm getting a burned out after doing it steady for over five years.

Anyway, here's my first shop of this weeks sale. I'll be going back to use some more of the $5 off $15 personal care target coupons. There is also a new Target coupon coming out Sunday for $10 off $40 pet care items (dog/cat food treats litter) that I'll combine with the BOGO Beneful dog food deal, and some rainchecks I have for Temptations and  Dentastix for pet treats. I used a raincheck for the Fresh Express lettuce even though it is BOGO again this week, I wanted to use my expired $2/1 coupons. I used some tearpad coupons for the Muller yogurt and a blinkie, combined with the stocking spree yogurt LU#. I'm lucky that this one store only requires you to show them a publix coupon with LU# and they will enter it multiple times and let you keep it. This prevents people from taking all the publix coupon booklets to get multiples, you only need one. Ask your store if they would do that, it is really handy. The other personal care deals were in the Purple Advantage Flyer. When I look at the breakdown, the degree isn't really that great a deal after you figure in tax, so I probably won't do that one again.

There also is the gas card deal ($10 off $50 Gas card wyb $50 in product), but we really stocked up last time and have over $1000 in gas cards on hand, so we'll skip it this time. In the end I spent $0.34 on product, add $2.19 in taxes and the total paid was $2.53, savings of $75.32.

Camry Power Window Repair

Well, here's another frugal project that will save you lots of money. We have a 2004 Toyota Camry that decided it was time to retire its front passenger window. It just quit last week and would not go back up with the flick of a switch. We muscled it back up and into place, then put on the child locks so it wouldn't accidentally go down. It finally is time to replace the power window regulator and motor. Fortunately, for us amateurs there is Youtube. You can fix anything now that used to be complicated, with the help of a useful Youtube video.

 

We searched and found one by 1AAuto that explained how to find the several bolts that held on the door panel, how to unplug the power and up/down switches, and loosen the bolts that hold the regulator and motor. After we ordered a new regulator ($60) from the same company, we followed the video and installed it in about 30 minutes. We did have a little snag because the parts were slightly different, but we switched out the window rail from the old part to make it work. It saved us from spending at least $400 to have it fixed at the shop. It was a simple job to do.

Replace Cabin Air Filter Toyota Camry Sienna Avalon Solara Lexus

We just replaced the cabin air filter on our Toyota and made a quick video of how to do it. Super simple and took less than 2 minutes. Don't you need fresh air in your car too?

Buy the part here:

My Publix Trip - Paid twenty cents

This week Publix had a couple good deals so I printed some coupons and got a few BOGO deals. I couldn't believe my store wasn't wiped clean and I was able to get all the items I sought. The Beneful is a nice product because the small 3 oz serving of wet food is all my dog needs on top of her kibble and she'll eat the whole bowl. Being a senior dog and light eater, she often goes more than a day without eating. I think its a game to get the wet food from me, but since she's a thin dog the wet food isn't a problem.

I also like the fish and we eat it a couple times a week. The Publix coupon is no longer available to print, but you can try to find the Family Savings booklet in the store. There are several other good BOGO coupons still available to print at www.getthesavings.com/publixfamily . Ok, back to the fish. Even though its not the recommended preparation instructions to microwave that's what I do. I cook the 2 filets in the 1000 watt microwave for 6 minutes, then again on the grill setting for 4 minutes. They come out perfect.

So, this week I had two orders to maximize use of the $5 off $30 Winn Dixie coupon. Did you hear that in Tampa, Winn Dixie will take competitor coupons now? That is awesome. Actually, I noticed I through in the picture my cantaloupe and lettuce from a third order I did for my raincheck on Powerade, so those items aren't in my spreadsheet above. Anyway, I spent twenty cents (0.20) and saved $124.56, for close to 100% savings. Here is link to spreadsheet if you want

My Publix Trip - Got Paid

In Tampa this store is not accepting the TQ $20/50 so I aborted that idea. I just got a few items to get my order to $30 and use up my Sweetbay produce and meat coupons. I'm excited to make some slow cooker pork chops this weekend. The Stacys bake shop chips are hard to find, look in the deli area. Take a picture of the BOGO sign so you can get a raincheck and continue to get items next week. I got paid less than a dollar and saved over $70, over 100% savings.

How To Save $2000 a Year

It has dawned on me that being frugal is boring. I know that sometimes I think its exciting to go recycling on Monday nights (Yeah! DH went with me last night too), and writing about coupon cost saving shopping trips, but y'all probably just skip the post after the first sentence, or even after the title. Today though is another boring tip that you probably already do, but maybe you didn't realize how much money you are saving by doing it. Its really simple. Brown Bag it. Yup, bring your lunch to work. It will save you thousands of dollars a year. But its boring because we do the same frugal lunch most days.

DH & I have been having homemade salads for lunch at work for over seven years, I've been doing it longer -close to ten years. And I'm not bored with it. Its really convenient to just grab it out of the fridge and eat, no waiting in line for the microwave, heating time or assembly. More on that some other day, we do have an assembly line when we make our salads on Sundays. Anyway, to avoid boredom with our lunch, we change the salad to Olive Garden greek salads, or BBQ pork salads, or Taco Salads, but mainly its grilled chicken salads.

There are always the comments in the lunch room as we get our salads, "Oh another salad day, how exciting!", Or "Gee what kind of salad today?", or "You're going to turn into a rabbit eating salads like that everyday". But we make GR8 salads that are easy and healthy. Sure we put meat and cheese on it, but you've got to have some fat in your diet. We portion the salad dressing into snack size ziplocs and put a bag in each bowl so its easy to bite off a corner and squirt it on and toss the bag - easy to clean up too.

But one of the best things about bringing a lunch everyday is that it saves us over $2000 a year. It's even cheaper now that we use coupons, and when we get our garden producing, it will cut the costs by another third. A typical lunch purchased at the Deli would cost about $6/day or $1440/year. Our salads cost $1.51/day or $362/year each, so thats about $724 total household cost, compared to $2880 cost of Deli lunches for both of us.

I know its boring, but VERY satisfying to save money. I've attached a yummy picture of my salad for today, and cost analysis (CLICK TO ENLARGE) so you can figure out how YOU can save money by packing your lunch and using coupons.

My Publix trip - Rainchecks Make It Happen

This is actually the combined total of 4 transactions at two stores since most Publix in Tampa have the usual limits on coupons. Two of the transactions were simply to use the  $2/2 PQs- 6 muller yogurts paid a dollar, and the Pam cooking spray plus two travel size dressings paid $0.68.

I lucked out and found razors at both stores to use my raincheck. I had them rewrite it for remaining content when I only got partial quantities. I also used my Naturally Fresh raincheck since it expires soon. These both gave a lot of overage which I spent on socks, water and pottery my husband wanted. We still got paid, even though I just figured out the cashier missed 3 coupons for $4. My fault for talking to the curious lady behind me and not paying full attention to the checkout.

In total we saved $218, and got paid $2.41 (should have been -$6.40). See breakout Iin the chart below.

My Publix Trip - Spent $0.64, Saved $111, plus got a $5 GC

 



Today, I went out despite the cold and rain. What miserable weather, but you gotta shop. I was pleased to see the Colgate is still $1.99, so I did another deal with the $5 GC. The truck must have unloaded the Kids Boost and the EmergenC so I used my raincheck and got my order up so much that I split it into two transactions. The Tampa Palms store told me they have a new rule where you can only use 1 $/$$ (Winn Dixie) coupon per person per day, so essentially more splitting up transactions unless you have more people with you. So, overall it was a good shop - I spent $0.64 total, and got a $5 GC, plus saved $111 on my groceries.

My Publix Shop Made Money Today

After such a disappointing time last week with empty shelves of all the moneymakers (razors, emergen C), I was pleased to find the light bulbs and Naturally Fresh Dressing, and plenty of Colgate Max Fresh toothpaste to put together a couple transactions today. One of the most helpful sources of finding the deals I've found lately is the Facebook group "Couponing at Publix". Join and have fun sharing your deals! It is managed by another blogger but the people are nice and supportive and there is less of the craziness that you get in open forums.

Anyway, the best deal is an unadvertised deal using the Naturally Fresh dressing bogo MQ which is on the main page of the naturallyfresh.com website, and it stacks with the $1/1 PQ in the Gameday flyer that is still available in stores and to print. If they are out of dressing and you need to get a rain check, I would take a picture of the sign and show it to customer service because they won't find it in the ad and may balk at a rain check without the proof. Also, the cashiers are totally confused by the colgate GC deal so it helps to explain it to them instead of having them stare at it for 10 minutes and then decide to ask someone how to do the deal. I split up the Colgate into 2 orders of 5 each so I could use 1 printable and 4 insert coupons since there is a limit of 4 like coupons for the Colgate.

So today, I spent $0.84 cents, got $10 in gift cards and saved $128.

Good Luck to you shopping this week!

 

My Publix Trip - Saved 96%

Finally, I found a Publix that had a few razors and some EmergenC to get some overage and use it toward fixins for pot roast. I had the HBA gal dig through the totes that just got delivered so I could get a few of those items. They also had the Green Giant Veggie tortilla chips that are really good, they aren't as salty as the BBQ and Sea Salt flavors. To get my order amount high enough, I used a rain check for the OM Shaved Ham. Another good deal this week with the new grocery flyer is the Muller yogurt, only $0.17 each when you use the new PQ in the purple flyer and the MQ from the 1-05RP.

I'm not really liking the store manager switchero that Publix has done in the last week. Today, the cashier tried to tell me I couldn't use my expired purple flyer PQ on the razors even though I used a raincheck. This required a call over of the new manager. Fortunately he was informed enough that he knew the policy allowed this coupon, but I had it pulled up on my smartphone anyway. It was a frustrating experience after spending a lot of time and effort to get such a good shop. Anyway, my husband shushed me and we finished our transactions (I spent $30 in one to use a WD, and then a WD + PQ in the remainder) and ended up spending $5.71, and saving over $151, a 96% savings.