I haven't posted any of my grocery trips in a long time, so I thought I would share today's trip with you so that you can see how coupons combined with sales can affect your grocery budget. While this is not my first grocery trip of the year, this was a fun one! :)

The picture above is everything I bought at Publix today:
8 boxes of Special K cereal (BOGO $1.68)
2 boxes of Quaker Life cereal (BOGO $2.24)
3 boxes of Green Giant Broccoli ($1)
2 packs of Yoplait Smoothies (frozen) (BOGO $1.60)
3 packs of B/S chicken breasts ($1.99/lb)
1 huge Boston Butt roast (will make 2 meals) ($1.99/lb)
10 tangerines ($1 total)
3 cans of tomatoes (.70)
4 Lunchables ($1)
20 jars of Peter Pan peanut Butter (yes, 20- but I went to 2 different stores so that I did not clear the shelves at one) (BOGO $1.23)

Coupons used:
20 .50/1 Peter Pan
20 $1/1 Peter Pan (Publix coupon)
2 $1.25/1 Yoplait Smoothies
4 BOGO Special K cereal
2 $1/2 Special K coupons (off the not-free boxes)
2 $1/2 Special K coupons (Target) (off the not-free boxes)
2 $1/2 Lunchables (Target coupon)
3 .50/1 Green Giant Frozen Veggies
1 $1/2 Quaker Cereal (Target coupon)

This is $148.38 worth of groceries, and I paid $19.44. To put that in perspective, the meat I bought cost $20- so everything else was free!

The biggest reason? The 20 jars of peanut butter. I know it seems excessive (but we really do eat a LOT of peanut butter), but I got $2 off per jar, and they were only $1.23, which means that I made over .75 per jar in overage- that comes out to over $15 worth of overage that got applied to my other groceries and made them free! This is another great reason to stockpile items at their lowest prices- if I can get 20 jars of money-making peanut butter that helps make the rest of my groceries free, why would I not? (I do not buy 20 newspapers- I got the peanut butter coupons on eBay. I often do this for items that I would really like to stockpile in large quantities).

I hope that you have been enjoying our Back to Basics series- because following it can help you save money like this! All of this information is in our Coupon Basics section.

Did you have a fun shopping trip this week? Tell us about it! You are always welcome to post a pic of your trip on our FB wall, or if you had a REALLY fantastic trip, you can email me about it (couponqueen@fabstealsanddeals.com) and include a pic, and it could appear on the blog!