I Want Caaaandyyyy!....Back to Rite-Aid for Chocolate

I still had some BOGO candy bar Qs in my pocket so I went traipsing back to Rite-Aid yesterday....

I won't bore you with the nit-picky figures.
Total before Coupons....$31.11
Coupon Total.....$21.03
Used $10 +Ups received for buying last mound of candy bars....$10.00
$31.11-$21.03-$10.00+Up=$.08 Out of Pocket.
And that 8¢ was put on my handy dandy free Rite-Aid gift card.

I should have bought 1 less $.50 candy bar and the OOP should have been $.18 but....
the cashier rang the 1st BOGO candy bar coupon for $1.59 and not the max. amount it allowed which was .99¢.  I caught it and told her so she rang the rest up correctly but she didn't go back and change that 1st one.
So I had an extra 50¢ to cover and threw in another 50¢ candy bar.
Oh, I received another $10 +Up Rewards for buying another batch of $25 worth of chocolate/candy advertising in the sales flyer.
So I basically just rolled that $10 +Up into more free candy bars and added a $1 +Up for buying the 2 Oatmeal boxes!

My teens are just thrilled to pieces with me lately!....I wonder why?  ;-)

Then I went back to the local store to pick up my Rxs last night and got this.....

2 x Quaker Oatmeal on sale $2.50=$5.00
2 x Pistaschios on sale $2.99=$5.98
2 x Colgate Toothpaste on sale BOGO=$3.79
1 x Lady Speed Stick Deodorant on sale=$2.95
1 x Aveeno Shampoo on sale=$5.99
2 x NYC cosmetics(1 Lip Gloss/1 Nail Polish) on sale BOGO=$1.99
SubTotal...$25.70

Coupons Used
1 x $5 off $25 from activating my wellness acct. online IPQ=$5.00
2 x $2/1 Quaker Oatmeal IPQ=$4.00
2 x $1/1 Pistachios IPQ(all you website)=$2.00
2 x $1/1 Colgate Total Toothpaste ManuQ=$2.00
2 x $1/1 Colgate product AdPerks/VV IPQ=$2.00
1 x $1/1 Speed Stick AdPerks/VV IPQ=$1.00
1 x $1/1 Speed Stick Flu Booklet Q=$1.00
1 x $4/1 Aveeno Hair item AdPerks/VV IPQ=$4.00
1 x $1/1 NYC item IPQ(all you website)=$1.00
Coupon Total....$22.00

$25.70-$22.00=$3.70
Used $3 in +Ups....$3.70-$3.00=$.70 Out of Pocket put on my Rite-Aid gift card.
I received $6 in +Up Rewards back....($1 WYB 2 Quaker, 2 x $1 Pistachios, $1 Aveeno, 2 x $1 NYC items)=$6.00
So I spent $3 +Ups and received $6 back.


A few comments....
*There is a AdPerks/VV Q that can be stacked with the In-ad Q to make the Deodorant $.99 OOP. The Deodorant Q is NOT serialized and can be printed and used more than once...but you have to print the number you want to have at once since you can't go back and print them again later once you have printed them.  The non-serialized Qs end with 122510(that's the expiration date for the Nov. viewed AdPerk/VV Qs).

*The Buy 1 NYC item, Get 1 NYC nail polish prints 1 $1 +Up Rewards for each item, even the free nail polish item.  Be sure to select the $1.99 nail polish and NOT the $.99 nail polish if you want the +Up to print.  The $.99 polishes do not produce a +Up Reward.


*It has come to my attention that you can use more than one AdPerks/VV Q in your order, even the serialized ones, which you can only print and use once.  You can only do this by accessing/having more than 1 AdPerk/VV account.  You can have other people print Qs from their AdPerk/VV accounts and give them to you to use in addition to your own AdPerk/VV Qs.  However you can only use 1 AdPerk Q per item(besides stacking ManuQs with them).  For example, I bought 2 Colgate Toothpastes.  I had 2 $1/1 Manu Colgate Qs, one for each tube.

I also had 2 $1/1 AdPerk/VV Colgate item Qs...one was from my account, one was from my BIL's account.  I stacked one of these Qs with each of the ManuQs for the toothpaste.  1 Adperk Colgate Q was in his name, 1 in mine.  Both scanned through with no beeps or problems.
I hope I made this point clear as mud. ;-)


THESE TRIPS Total Spent....$.78(put on free Rite-Aid gift card)
Value of Items....$87.60
SCR qualified for...$0.00
Gift Cards earned....$0.00
+Up Rewards earned...$16.00
+Up Rewards spent...$13.00
+Up Rewards left to spend....$24.00

GRAND TOTALS--November Rebate Period

Number of Transactions......3
Total Spent....$1.38 put on free Gift Cards/Certificates so ZERO OOP
Value of Items purchased....$138.48
SCR qualified for....$0.00
Other Cash....$0.00
Additional Non-Cash Rewards....$0.00

+UPS Totals for Nov. SCR period
+Up Rewards carryover from 10/24....$21.00
+Up Rewards spent....$13.00
+Up Rewards earned....$17.00
+Up Rewards left....$25.00


Sluggy 

Drawing a Life Lesson from Spider-man

The Coupon Goddess has again brought up a Reader Issue for debate.  Go read about it HERE.
Basically it involves instituting Couponing Skills Courses for Food Stamp recipients.

If you've been a longtime reader of my blog, you'll remember that I partook in a Food Stamp Challenge back in June of this year.  I spent that month exploring the issues surrounding Food Stamps as well as living off of an average full monthly allotment of snap benefits(food stamps)in my daily life.
You can search back in the archives of June 2010 to read up on what I talked about then and see how we did with that challenge.
So this issue is not something I haven't considered long and hard before.  And over the intervening months I've continued to mull some of these same issues over in my own head.

Here is my very long response to this debate.....

Sluggy
"With great power comes great responsibility"--Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-man

****
First off, I am older than dirt and have "been around" on this big blue ball many many years and seen a lot of human nature.
We are fascinating creatures, are we not?

Requiring 'courses' of some kind by social service agencies has been tried off and on over the years since the modern day food stamp program began a long time ago.  Anything from mandated lessons on nutrition to shopping skills to cooking skills have been held.  States are in charge of implementing, modifying & setting rules within a standard frame for their individual Food Stamp programs so nothing has been tried on a nationwide scale.

The result of all these courses overall? 
Unless attendance was required to get the food benefit, most people in the program did NOT go.  While I'm sure you have recipients with legit reasons why they couldn't attend, it is human nature to keep doing what you are doing and not step outside of your comfort zone and try new things.  Most people are not motivated to make the effort it takes, even though they would reap many benefits in the life they lead from partaking of something like these courses.  Some people would be against being told to attend from the word "go",  since grown up people don't take kindly to being treated like a child and being told what to do is seen as condescending by many.  Then the Food Stamp employees would be dealing with a whole lot of passive-aggressiveness on their part when dealing with these clients.

If efforts are made(and additional monies in the program's budget spent)on ideas that only a few take advantage of(like courses), those in charge end up discontinuing those services.  Obviously, the courses are NOT cost-effective from an accounting standpoint.  Also when budgets are cut if these kind of services are in place, they are the first thing to be cut(even if the clients utilize them),because the funds need to go for actual food benefits and spread out to cover the largest group of recipients it can.

It's sad really, that people as a whole don't take every advantage or help offered to them, and that we keep cycling through plans like this...start a course, have it met with indifference by the majority, discontinue that service and years later, after that service is forgotten have a new set of program directors try what is basically the same idea again.  Sad and frustrating.

That being said....I do feel that these sort of nutrition/cooking skills/shopping skills courses ARE a good thing.  And if it helps just one family break out of a cycle of poverty and/or diminished health, it was worth attempting.

I took part in a Food Stamp Challenge this past summer where I attempted to feed my family on the avg. monthly snap benefit amount those on full food stamp allotments receive.  With my couponing/cooking/budgeting skills I was able to complete it fairly handily without altering the diet I fed my family much.  If I had shopped/cooked like the average American, I doubt that I would have completed the task as handily.

As a part of this FS Challenge, I also researched the history of the program, the statistics, the shopping habits, the rules, and how to augment your scrip with other resources available to the general public and how to make frugal workarounds to stretch that money further.  I talked to people in the grocery store who used snap benefits to get some 'real' feedback to my 'phony' poverty.

In all this I found that the majority of snap benefit recipients have NO CLUE that you CAN USE COUPONS WITH FOOD STAMPS!
I was floored to find this out frankly.  The ones I talked to were equally surprised that they could combine the 2 forms of payment as well.

Now, I do see that using coupons if you are on food stamps is problematic, since if you are on food stamps, you are economically disadvantaged.
The majority of food stamp recipients don't have either extra money available or the resources to gather coupons.  If you don't have enough money to buy food for your family, how can you justify spending money on multiple newspapers for the inserts or paying for a coupon clipping service to get coupons?  Also, if money is tight, where do you get the cash for crazy expensive ink cartridges as well as paper to print out the coupons available online(if in fact, you have access to a computer WITH a printer)?

Here is what I would like to see happen.  It would NOT require any additional monies in a state's food stamp budget to be spent on non-food stamp benefits NOR would it require any added payroll funds.
1-Have every social services employee who deals with the public in the FS program make each recipient of the benefits aware that coupons CAN be used with Food Stamps in payemnet at the stores.  If handouts could be printed off at a small cost, then also give each recipient something in writing to take away when they come in to the agency.
Knowledge is power.  Those who are pro-active in their lives will take that power and use it, I hope. ;-)

2-Somehow get manufacturer's to supply their coupons(for food products only) to food stamp recipients for free.
I don't know who this could be accomplished, but by putting the coupons in the hands of those using snap benefits you take away one more stumbling block to stretching your food scrip dollar further.  I am sure that giving free coupons to the govt. agencies who handle the FS programs would be viewed as some how wrong(think companies using that 'in' supplying coupons directly to these consumers as a form of advertising and drumming up business and profits for those companies), perhaps some one can find a happy compromise that offends no one's sense of fair play.  An independent clearing house to receive the free coupon supplies, in charge of distributing said coupons to those in need.  I'm unclear on the actual 'how to' to get this accomplished.

3-While most govt. social service agencies are resistant to new ideas and people coming in off the street offering them help, try this at your local food bank or soup kitchen--a non-govt. entity.  If you coupon and have the bent or ability to teach others, go to said private entity and offer to hold a couponing class free of charge to anyone who wants to attend.  It may take some convincing but hopefully if you are persuasive and have a good argument for why it's a VERY good thing, and someone in charge will give you a chance to do something to help their clients outside of handing them a bag of food or a plate of hot food.
Or at the very least, approach these same independent entities about starting a Coupon Box at their location.  This would just be some system(a box in a corner or something more elaborate if wanted/needed)where someone could get free-to-them coupons to use.  Get a group together to donate coupons they won't or can't use to this effort.  File the coupons by category and make it available at the food bank or soup kitchen, etc. so people can take what they need.  It would just require getting the approval and setting this up initially and then once a month, someone would need to glean through and trash the out of date coupons, maintaining the system as it where.  Low maintenance and BIG potential for rewards!

Now I am off to DO something to help someone here using my coupon smarts.
What can YOU do in your world to make a positive impact?

Sluggy

An Open Letter to McDonald's

Dear McDonald's Corporation,

Since 1981, your company, McDonald's has been trying to get the world to eat the abomination of a sandwich you call the McRib.

It was a dismal failure the first go round so you quietly pulled this puppy from the lineup in 1985.
4 YEARS you had tried to turn a profit on this concoction of a ground pork patty, bbq sauce, raw onions and pickles on a bun.
Just makes my mouth water typing that......
Wait! I lie.....NO it doesn't.

And instead of taking heed of the world's lack of love for this sammie, you, McDonald's, have brought it back sporadically in some form or another to grace your restaurant menus for the last 25 years.
25 years.....haven't we all suffered enough already?!
And now it's back again.....just in time for Oct. 31st....like a very bad Halloween prank gone wrong!

All that money on marketing wasted with no profits produced.
All that "food" produced that you end up not needing since the demand for this product is nil.
By the way, what do you do with all that food when you yank the McRib from your menus?
On second thought, don't tell me....it will only make me throw up a little in my mouth.

The McRib has had more Farewell Tours than the Who.
Of the two, I think Peter Townsend looks better than the McRib for the wear.

And another thing......
Pickles?
Pickles on a bbq sammie?!?

I grew up in the South and take my word for it, McDonald's executives, because sauce runs through my veins.....
No self-respecting Southerner would put pickles on a bbq pork sandwich!
Ok, maybe Uncle Cleatus' third cousin Bubba who got kicked in the head by a mule when he was a kid.
And maybe those immigrant Cuban folks in Florida but that's a totally different pork sandwich and Florida is NOT the South. ;-)

So take my advice and just take the McRib out to the woodpile and put it and us out of our misery please!
You know what a woodpile is don't you McDonald's?...it's that thing next to the Smokehouse and the Barbecue Pitt where real chefs cook/smoke real pigs before they put that real meat between a bun.

A little coleslaw on a real bbq sandwich is optional but definitely not pickles.

I think the McRib needs to go toward the light this time and stay there!
It would be in the best interests of our planet and mankind.
Stomachs across our world will thank you for your humanitarian efforts.

Sincerely,

Sluggy, G.R.I.T.S.*

*Girls Raised In The South

Is That A Food Money Hemorrhage I Feel?

                                    (Images courtesy of Millenium-mb.com)





Well this month began as a fairly Frugal Affair.

Ok, we took a short getaway trip to Ocean City MD....but we did it on the cheap and thrifty side!
And I stayed out of the grocery stores for two+ weeks....let alone any other kind of store, not counting Rite-Aid of course!  But Rite-Aid doesn't really count since they pay ME to shop there and I don't ever actually spend money at that store. 8-))
We were content and happy to be using up some stockpiled and freezer goodies for meals and snacks as the month began.

And then it happened......

Three, count 'em three local grocery stores ran Catalina deals in the last 2 weeks, including that lovely Hormel Bacon Promotion(slurp).  Weis Markets had a couple of Cat deals but I didn't even get to that store to take advantage of them....yes, I am slipping in my old age.

This past few weeks, it's like a rare convergence of celestial bodies combined with a lining up of the planets to form a Bargain Eclipse!lol
*Cue the skies opening up and a bevvy of heavenly hosts descending around my head, plucking on tiny harps and raising their angelic voices.....aaaaaah, aaaaahh, aaaaahhh.....

And just like that, I went from a monthly grocery spending total of just under $50 for October to a bloated budget busting total of over $300 for food.
Eeeeek!

I know, I know.....$300 in monthly food spending for a family of 4 is NOT really  "Out There" compared to what the average American spends on groceries, but for me, well......it's HUGE!lol

While I budget for food each month, we aren't living paycheck to paycheck and we regularly live well below our financial means.
So when I find great deals on food or anything else we need, I have the flexibility to spend more than I've budgeted and take advantage of the deals without taking the funds from some other expense we need the cash for instead.
Having a little extra cushion of money is a great thing indeed!
I highly recommend it. ;-)
But still.... when you scribble that pencil down to a nub and see $300 staring back at you from your piece of paper, it tends to make you pause, draw a darn big breath and make you light in the head for a moment.
Or is that just me? ;-)

I did 4 transactions at Redner's, doing the ConAgra and General Mills Catalina promotions(each gave a $10 Cat WYB $25 of items).  I bought 48 assorted items(from tv dinners to cooking oil to whipped cream to canned tomatoes) and spent $51.59 total OOP.  And I have a $10 Cat left to use.
While $50+ sounds high, that was for $293.53 of reg. retail value of food.
That's a savings rate of just under 82.5%(not counting the $10 Cat I have left).

As for my Hormel totals at Price Chopper......
3 bags of Pepperoni
26 packages of Bacon
34 cans of Chili
Equals 63 items
$39.90 OOP + a $7 Catalina left to spend
$222.27 reg. retail price of items
Savings of 82% (not counting the $7 left to spend).

So now I need to apply a Financial Tourniquet to our spending and try to avoid the grocery stores and eat down on this pile 'o food.
Luckily the month is almost over and I get to start with a clean budget slate in 5 days. 8-))

So how is your food spending going this month?
Have you gotten any good deals on groceries lately?

Sluggy

New SCR Period at Rite-Aid...Sugar Rush!

I went and used my BOGO Candy Bar Qs Sunday evening before all the Rite-Aid stores are wiped out of the BOGO King sized Bars this week.....

And notice the spiffy new fall colors tablecloth too!lol

This transaction is easy....
32 x King sized Candy Bars on sale BOGO($1.59)=$25.44
SubTotal....$25.44

Coupons Used
1 x $5 off $25 purchase Q from my wellness acct.=$5.00
16 x BOGO Mars brand ManuQ(up to $.99)=$15.84
Coupon Total....$20.84

$25.44-$20.84=$4.60

Used $4 in +Up Rewards...$4.60-$4.00=$.60 OOP put on free Rite-Aid gift card.

Received $10 +Up Reward for buying $25 in advertised Candy items.(lots of candy items qualify, check the sales flyer).

Many people on Sunday were reporting that the $10 Candy +Up didn't print for them.  It seems some of the candy items were not keyed in to qualify for this +Up and corporate was fixing it.  Not sure if it's fixed yet so check the Slick Deals board before you go try to do this deal.  If your +Up does not print, call Rite-Aid Corporate Customer Service at 1-800-748-3243


THIS TRIP Total Spent....$.60(put on free Rite-Aid gift card)
Value of Items....$50.88
SCR qualified for...$0.00
Gift Cards earned....$0.00
+Up Rewards earned...$10.00
+Up Rewards spent...$4.00


GRAND TOTALS--November Rebate Period

Number of Transactions......1
Total Spent....$.60 put on free Gift Cards/Certificates so ZERO OOP
Value of Items purchased....$50.88
SCR qualified for....$0.00
Other Cash....$0.00
Additional Non-Cash Rewards....$0.00

Nothing spent and I am "up" $6 in +Ups as I received $10 but only spent $4.

+UPS Totals for Oct. SCR Period
+Up Rewards carryover from last trip....$20.50
+Up Rewards spent....$4.00
+Up Rewards earned....$10.00
+Up Rewards left....$26.50*
*Updated +Ups Total....$21.00($5.50 of old total given to kids to spend)

Sluggy