So, I have a confession to make. Umm, I sort of bought 1216 of these boxes of Wheaties Fuel cereal. I am totally a sucker for a good deal, and I just couldn’t pass it up! (more on that in a minute)

For years now, I have clipped coupons here and there, but I never *really* understood how to save real money by using them. In the past, coupons usually amounted to something like taking a whopping $0.80 off of a $95 grocery bill. C’mon, how much meaning does that really have? Does that really motivate you? For that reason, I have been an off-and-on couponer.

However, I have recently started learning much more about how to target the coupons to sales, and make actual, VERY noticeable savings. I will say this, I have only been playing with this for a few weeks, but I have significantly cut my grocery budget in just that short time.

How about an example?

This week, Kroger has Wheaties Fuel on sale for $1.99. OK, so cereal for $2 a box is a decent deal, but what if you toss in some coupons on top of that?

• Become a fan of Wheaties Fuel on Facebook and get a $1 off coupon here.
• There are $0.75 off coupons all over the Internet, like this one. (these coupons won’t be up for long though)
• I also found several $1.50 off of 2 coupons stuck to the boxes themselves.
• Kroger.com has an electronic coupon for $0.75 off 1 box that you can load onto your Plus card.

Wow, so with the coupons I had, the boxes dropped to $1.24 (just $1 for the box I bought with the Facebook coupon). Ready for this? *Said in my best TV commercial announcer voice* But wait, there’s more!

General Mills currently has a catalina deal where if you buy 4 boxes (in the same transaction), you get a coupon for $4 off your next shopping order that prints after you complete your purchase.

So, if you have been following the math there, I bought 4 boxes and scanned coupons to get $0.75 off of each. So, out of pocket, I paid $4.96. Then, the register kicked out a $4 catalina coupon, essentially dropping the price to $0.24 per box!!! So, like I said, I sort of bought 12 boxes.

Evidence:

Thanks Crystal for making me aware of the Wheaties Fuel deal!

If you noticed the McCormick Grill Mates in the first picture, I dropped them in as a second simple example. I had several $0.50 off coupons for any McCormick spice. Last week, Kroger had the Grill Mates on sale for 10/$10. And, in case you don’t know, Kroger doubles any coupon that is $0.50 or less, which meant I got those for FREE! This week they went up to $1.25, but that still just makes them $0.25 after the coupon.

So I’m curious, how much do you use coupons?

If you follow the catalina deals, where do you go to find out about them?