What $20 can get you

I guess I took the latter part of the summer off of blogging, even though it wasn't exactly intentional.  Oops.  I've got at least one post in my head, but haven't taken the time to get it out yet... but you still have to wait for that one :)  Don't feel too bad, though.  Most of what I would've written would probably have involved commentary about the TV show Bones, since I spent a good chunk of my free time this summer watching the first 4 seasons on Netflix.  Now I've got to wait until October for season 5 to come out on DVD... argh.

Anyway, I've also taken some time off from couponing a bit.  Between 10 days of vacation (and the preceding days of clearing out the fridge), and then my husband's extensive business travel lately, I haven't been cooking much and thus haven't been shopping much.  But with school starting up, I decided to stock up on some lunch snacks - especially when I saw the General  Mills promotion on Southern Savers.  Yes, I probably spent an hour finding the right coupons and trying to determine whether it was worth it or not to run the deal, but I'm totally thrilled that I did!  Basically, a bunch of GM products were on sale, and if you bought 20 items, you got $6 off your order instantly.  So... grab a bunch of items you've got coupons for, and it works out pretty well.  Here's what I ended up with:

Grand total:  $20.00 (yeah, even... which is awesome in and of itself), and most of these items have BoxTops on them that give money to the school, which I love.  The organic tomato paste was not part of the deal, but in working up the deal I found $0.75 coupons which doubled to $1.50... and since they're only $1.55 and I needed some anyway, I grabbed some nearly-free ORGANIC tomato paste - sweet!  I also realize that most of these items are very NON-organic, but there is a convenience factor :)  And they were cheap.  Let's face it - 7 boxes of cereal, 5 boxes of granola bars, 4 boxes of fruit snacks, 4 4-pks of yogurt, and 2 cans of tomato paste = 22 items for $20.  Who could turn that down?  I think my receipt said I saved $40+.

And it gets even better!  The granola bars and fruit snacks had special promotions as well... buy 3, 4 or 5 and get coupons for $$ off your next purchase.  So the 2-lb bag of frozen shrimp (normally $26) that was on sale for $8.65 ended up costing me a little over $3.  See why I had to post?  As one blogger I read would say - yeah, I took an hour to organize the coupons... but I saved over $60.  That's like getting paid $60/hr :)

Saving money... Soli Deo Gloria