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In playing the grocery game, one of the biggest aids in getting free groceries are the coupons put out by the liquor companies. They are tear pads found at the wine department or tags hang on the wine bottles, which give you $ off produce, meat, fruit, cheese, seafood, juices, etc.
The tags for instant may say “Save $6 on groceries when you buy 2 bottles of xxx brand of Wine 750 ml or larger”. But the wonderful thing about this tags is: the liquor law in IL prohibited coupon redemption for the purchase of hard liquor, so there will be a “No alcohol/wine purchase is required” in the fine print!!
Some of the “NO ALCOHOL PURCHASE REQUIRED” tags that I have found and used in the last few months!
Most of this tags are specific about what products you can use them on, but some are open to interpretation!
What is a mixer? The cashiers or store managers may not always agree with me, my interpretation: mixer is anything that you can mix with liquor! So, Coke, milk, orange juice, coffee drink, are all mixers!
What is a produce? Are eggs and frozen vegetables included? 
I was able to find tons of the tear pads and hang tags (most people don’t pay attention to them, unless they do coupons) and used them to get seafood, produce, meat, cheese for FREE. Our fridge is now well stocked with fruits like Kiwi, strawberries and mangoes we otherwise won’t buy as they are expensive. We have frozen shrimps, chicken, pork, ham and sausages to last us for at least 3 months!
Our refrigerator has limited freezer space, so when the store has a FREE freezer deal in the winter, we got one with coupons!
Having a chest freezer has allowed us to store all the meat and shrimps we got for FREE.
A Catalina deal is a promotion or marketing campaign run by certain manufacturers or stores to give rebate in terms of cash coupons for buying certain amount of specific products. What we have at the Jewel-Osco grocery store last two week was a “Buy $30, get back $15″ Catalina deal by Procter and Gamble, General Mills and Coca-cola.
The trick is, at Jewel Osco: the $30 total is based on normal shelf price, even though the item can be on sale for less than the shelf price. Combine with coupon use, you get really good deal, things for free or even making money by buying this items included in the deal!
Walgreen does the same kind of catalina deal every week, but Walgreen doesn’t allow you to use the Catalina coupons on the same item to get more catalina coupons (it’s called rolling the deal in couponing lingo). But, Jewel Osco not only allow you to roll the Catalina coupons, they also take the catalina coupons from Walgreen! So, I used some of the Walgreen coupons at Jewel Osco stores to buy groceries or roll them into more catalina coupons when they have a good deal.
I am a skeptic of FREE stuffs advertised and usually are able to stay away from all the marketing gimmicks. Few weeks ago, I read a feature story on the local newspaper, a woman talked about how she was able to save money and got great bargains using all the coupons. I went on the websites/forum given at the end of that story and started my research for two weeks.
It’s a game you play against the retailers and the manufacturers. As a math person, I find it really fun to find the best way to stretch the dollars or even get stuffs for free. At first, I clipped the coupons that I thought I might use and threw away the rest. Then, I learned about “coupon trains” and you can trade coupons that you don’t want for coupons that you can use with fellow couponers.
The strategy is to use the coupons combine with store sales and you would be amazed what you can buy for FREE.
Selection of stuffs that I bought for FREE or almost FREE using the coupons during store sales.
Organic tomato sauce
Organic pinto, garbanzo and black beans
The tomato sauce and beans were on sale “5 for $5″. With the $1 coupon, they are all FREE. Did not even have to pay sale tax! I don’t even know what to do with the beans, but they are FREE, I am sure I will figure out a way to use them. 
Colgate toothpaste
The toothpaste was on sale for $2.99, with $1.50 coupon, and the $2 store voucher, a profit of $0.55 each!
Elastics and hair bands
Some elastics were on sale for $2.xx and $1.xx. The hair band was $3.99. A mix of them and use $2 manufacturer’s coupon for each, there are FREE !
Raynoc Batteries
On sale for $1 for a pack of two AA and AAA. With the $1 manufacturer’s coupon, they are …FREE! T said they may not last as long as other name brands, but who cares when they are free.
Organic Whole Wheat Pasta
They are normally $3+ per box, last week it was on sale for $2.50 with buy one get one Free, with the two $1 coupons, it’s $0.25 per box! This pastas don’t get bad and I bought enough to last us for a long time. : -)
Couponing 101 is to stockpile things when they are on sale and you have coupons that match up with the sales. Our pantry is stocked up with this whole pile for less than $10!
Aluminium Foil and Deodorant
They were on sale and were all FREE after coupons.
Scented oil candle holders and refills
These scented oil candle holders usually are $9.99 to $11.99 a piece! I bought them when the candle holder were on sale for $4.99 each and the refills were on sale $5 for two. I got them FREE with coupons! All I have to pay was taxes due at store that calculated taxes before coupons. At the drug store that calculated taxes after coupons, didn’t even have to pay a cent. They are going to be some of the Christmas gifts we plan to give to family and friends.
Scotch tape and gift wrap
These tapes were on sale $2 for two packs, with the $1 coupons, they were free. The store also gives $2 rebate for the tapes. So, I got 6 packs for FREE and will receive $2 in rebate. Not a bad idea to go to the store to get six packs of tapes and earned $2!
Arm and Hammer Laundry Detergents
Full retail price of the Arm and Hammer laundry detergent normally is $6.99 at the drug stores. With the $5 store coupon and $1 manufacturer’s coupon, one bottle of laundry detergent is $0.99. The drug store was having a buy $25 get $5 voucher promotion.
First transaction, I bought 4 bottles of detergent, which rang up $27.96. After deducting the 4 X $5 store coupons and 4 x $1 manufacturer’s coupons, the total was $3.96 before tax. Sale tax is 7.5 % at where we live. So I paid $4.28 and get a $5 voucher for the next trip. Not only I get 4 bottles of laundry detergent at a bargain, I also gained 72 cents from this shopping trip. The $5 voucher can be used to buy the next 4 bottles of laundry detergent. I rolled that $5 voucher and wiped out the shelf. Basically I got 18 bottles of the laundry detergent for NOTHING! Gave 2 bottles to the in laws and now we have 16 bottles in the store room.
I like my new hobby! Which hobby helps you to save money? All my other hobbies caused a hole in my pocket!!
We got a pair of used washer and dryer for a steal but ended up have to resell the dryer due to it being a gas dryer and we have only electric hook up in the laundry room at the basement. It’s necessary to get a dryer as we won’t be able to dry the laundry on the lines when the weather turns cold.
They are many people in the opposite situation i.e. moved into a place that has gas hook up and try to get rid of the electric dryer. So, we have been looking at craiglist.com for a reliable ,less than two years old used electric dryer for a couple weeks. We did find some very good deals. But T was concerned about hauling it home and bring it down to the basement, and it’s not worth hurting our backs doing that.
We finally decided to get a new one from the store today, so we don’t have to worry about delivery and installation! We went to Sears to check out the GE dryer that we saw online. It was priced at about $750 on sears.com.(not including all the taxes and delivery charges, which will be about $100+)
But then we saw a LG dryer that in the same price range, has the same functions and a larger capacity, but was on clearance due to a scratch on the top of the dryer. We don’t mind the scratch as it ’s hardly visible and saving of $200 is a substantial amount of money for us who are just starting out.
So, we decided to buy the LG dryer instead. They are going to deliver the dryer on Tuesday morning and I am looking forward to clear the laundry piles.:-)
T’s parents wanted to buy the dryer as a gift for us. Didn’t want them to spoil T or denied them a chance to help us out, so the compromise was: we paid 2/3 and they paid 1/3!
We went down town to shop for warm clothes and household stuffs after dinner. We wanted to check out the dryers at Sears but it was closed when we reached there at 7.15 p.m. In this small town, most stores close at 9.00 p.m and some close at 7.00 p.m!
We first went to TJMax, a discounted store, it’s quite small, thus the selection is quite limited. Found a few trousers that I like, but could not find the “short” ones, the “normal” and “long” ones were too long for me. Bought a pair of jeans that has the “short” version and two pairs of tights. Also went to JCPenny, which’s just a few blocks away, bought half a dozen of warm socks and a pair of chenille gloves, we bought a little over $10 so we could pay with the $10 coupon we got in the mail! (That’s how desperate the retail businesses are trying to get people into their doors!)
Then, we went to Target, bought some hand towels and washcloths. These towels and washcloths which were at least $2-$4 per piece were on sale for $1.58 per pack, four washcloths in one pack and two hand towels in one pack. Though they are not the plush and soft type, I prefer the thinner ones, they are easier to dry and save on energy.
Though we do have enough hand towels and wash cloths, they are all in brown color and got mixed up a lot. So, we got them in two colors, beige for T and green for me, so they don’t get mixed!
We also checked out the clothes drying rack. We saw one selling for $29.99 on target.com, but it’s not available at the store. Drying racks are probably not very popular here as most people just dry their clothes in the dryer. We wanted a rack to hang the almost dry and some of the sweaters as dryer tends to shrink them.
Actually, this chrome metal drying rack is quite small and won’t be able to hold too many clothes., but it’s the better built one that we can find. We actually found a wooden drying rack almost the same size of this metal one at the garage sale two weeks ago and paid $2 for it.
This wooden rack is quite light, it was blew off from the balcony on the second floor to the lawn few days ago! Despite falling from 12 feet height, it’s still in tact and nothing is broken. It might look flimsy, but it’s surprisingly well built!!
We could see the mall from the highway the last time we went down to the Korean grocery store in Naperville, but we did not stop because we were in a hurry. Since today is T’s day off from work, we decided to stop on the way to check out the Chicago Premium Outlet mall.
This is indeed a shopper haven, you can find 120 impressive name brand stores all at one mall! Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, Brooks Brothers, Calvin Klein, Coach, Elie Tahari, Gap, Giorgio Armani, J.Crew, Kate Spade, Kenneth Cole, Lacoste, Nike, Polo Ralph Lauren, Salvatore Ferragamo, Sony, Theory and many more.
When you hear the announcements in English and Japanese, you could guess they must have a lot of Japanese tourists shop here. We do see a lot of Asian women who look like they were tourists buying handbags at the Coach store. I do wonder the woman who bought more than ten Coach handbags resells them or just a Coach fanatic?
We were there for about one and half hours, we could hardly “see” everything, in fact spending more time backtracking T who sat on the benches along the stores instead of going with the shopping flow! It’s fine since it was just window shopping. The name brand clothing and shoes may be less expensive compare to Asia, but they are till high priced items. However, you can still find bargains for things on closeouts or last season’s clearance. I found a pair of really comfortable leather shoes for about $10 after 80% discount!
