Here’s Friday’s haul:

Total spent: -.75 cents!
Total before coupons: $7.26
View receipt

Got:

4 Glade plug ins
Over 2 pounds of bananas

So for this transaction, I used 2 of the $2 Glade catalina coupons from my last Safeway visit, and 2 “Buy One, Get One Free” plug-in coupons. The plug-ins are on sale for $1.50, so after buying some bananas at .59 cents a pound, I figured my total would be roughly .20 cents, depending on the actual weight of the bananas. But when the cashier scanned the “Get One Free” coupons, they both took off $1.99. “Oh, look, it’s taking off too much,” I pointed out. “The plug-ins are only $1.50, and it’s taking off $1.99.” To which the cashier replied, “Well, if that’s what it’s taking off, then that’s what it is. I can’t argue with what my computer says.” And since I’d handed over $4 worth of catalinas, it put my total at minus .75 cents. “And you get change back!” she said. So the cashier pretty much insisted on giving me money back! Not to mention that I got $8 in catalinas from the plug-in purchase. Crazy!

Total spent: .05 cents
Total before coupons: $2.05
View receipt

I went through the line one more time to get another pound of bananas and one more plug-in. And I got the same $2 catalina coupon back, so I left the store with $8 in catalinas and an extra .70 cents in my pocket.

Then, I headed to Walgreens:

Total spent: $3.94 – but I’ll get $7.49 back in rebates
Total before coupons: $28.44
View receipt

4 bottles of Pert Plus – on sale for $3.49, and I used 4 $1.50 coupons from the 9/7 newspaper inserts, combined with the $2.50/1 EasySaver Pert coupon, to produce .51 cents of overage for each bottle.
1 bottle of Rimmel foundation – on sale for $7.49, free after rebate
1 box of Zantac – on sale for $4.99, used this coupon for $5.50 off.
2 packages of TP

This transaction was just a mess. Originally, I had planned to get 3 trial size packets of Airborne, on sale for .99 cents, and use the $2/1 coupon from the 9/7 inserts to produce $1.01 overage each. To soak up this overage, I picked up a package of Quilted Northern TP, which would have been $3 after using a $1 Quilted Northern coupon. The remaining 3 cents would be absorbed by the rebate item.

The first Airborne coupon scanned just fine, but then the register refused to take the other 2, or my Zantac coupon (which came from the Walgreens website!). The manager came over and had to push the Zantac coupon through manually. Then he looked at the Airborne coupon for a long time and said, “Oh, it won’t take it because it says limit one per purchase.” I mentioned that each item is considered a purchase, and that I had 3 items. He said that in this instance, “purchase” refers to the whole transaction. I knew this was not accurate information, because if that were the case it would say “limit one per transaction” – for an explanation of this, I recommend this great coupon basics tutorial on Hot Coupon World. But it’s not worth arguing over – if they don’t want to take my coupons, I will just politely put the item back. Anyway, since I had bought the TP as an overage eater for the Airborne, I asked the cashier to just void the TP and all three Airbornes from my transaction. In retrospect, I could have kept 1 Airborne on there and let the rebate item suck up the $1.01 overage, but I was getting so confused and was trying to keep the math simple so that I didn’t end up paying more than I wanted to.

At any rate, the total came to $3.94, which didn’t seem right at all – I had figured that it would come to over $6. So after I paid, I sat in my car with my calculator for a good 5 minutes or so, just staring at the receipt trying to make heads or tails of it. If you take a look at the receipt you’ll probably see why I was having trouble making sense of it! Finally, I realized that the clerk had voided off the Quilted Northern and handed me my coupon back, but the $1 coupon for it had not been voided off. $4.94 was still way lower than I was expecting, but I thought I must have done the math wrong on the Pert.

I headed back into the store, explained what had happened and showed the manager my receipt. “So I owe you a dollar!” I said. He looked a little stunned that I would want to fix an error that was in my favor. “Oh, don’t worry about it,” he said. “It was our mistake. But thank you for coming back in!” So he appreciated my honesty, anyway.

And when I was scanning the receipt in today, I studied it further and added everything up several times, and it finally dawned on me – the $2 coupon for the Airborne hadn’t been voided off, either!! So that’s why it was so low. What a confusing mess that transaction was!

After all that, I headed over to Fred Meyer:

Total spent: Nothing out of pocket, put $7.97 on a gift card that I got as a birthday present. And I got $16 back in catalina coupons!
Total before coupons: $37.95
View receipt

1 Dove deodorant – on sale for $1.99, and there was a tearpad of coupons for $2/1 sitting right next to it. So watch for these if you shop at Fred Meyer!
4 Glade Flameless Candles – On sale for $8.99, and I used 2 $5/1 coupons from the 9/7 inserts, and 2 “Buy One, Get One Free” coupons that I printed here. And I got a $4 catalina back for each candle that I bought! This promo is running at other Kroger stores, Safeway, and probably a few other chains as well.
These candles are great, especially with power outage season fast approaching!

So essentially, I was able to double the amount I had to spend by turning $7.97 on a gift card into $16 in coupons. My cashier was super nice, and couldn’t believe the deal. As I was leaving, I heard her say to the next customers in line, “Did you SEE that?! She got all those $4 coupons back!!”

I then used those coupons to pay for the following items:

Total spent: Nothing out of pocket, put $1.54 on my gift card
Total before coupons: $19.54
View receipt

1 head of organic red leaf lettuce
Just under 2 pounds of organic apples
1 Eggplant
A pound of organic oranges
A pound of broccoli
1 gallon of milk
1 8oz bag of cheese
2 ears of corn
1 canister of bread crumbs
Another free Dove deodorant

Then I made one last stop at Safeway on my way home:

Total spent: .04 cents
Total before coupons: $2.04
View receipt

I used one of my $2 Glade catalinas to buy:

1 package of TP – my favorite overage item! After all, you can never have too much of it, and there’s rarely good sales on it in my area.
1 bag of Cheetos – I was hungry for a snack. The bag was empty by the time I snapped this picture!