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.
We found this mini van on craiglist.com, it’s a site just like Ebay, but it’s FREE to list items for sale and to search the site. The seller lives at Oak Park near Chicago about 50 miles from where we live. We drove down there to view last Wed and were happy with what we saw. So, we made arragnement tor the mechanic to do an inspection to make sure there is no evident problem with the car. After T signed the papers and paid the seller with a cashier check. I drove the Toyota Camry and T drove this baby home!
Since it’s a bigger car that runs at 18 MPG (miles per gallon) or 7-8 km per liter, its oil consumption is not that fantastic. We know Kia is not known for good mileage with gas. But, we aren’t willing to pay double or triple for a Honda, Nissan or Toyota of similar age! Gasoline is at about $2.50 per gallon right now, we plan to use it mainly for hauling goods to flea markets and for me to run around town. We will still be using the Toyota Camry as our main car for commuting and going out of town.
Used cars are rather inexpensive here in America, we paid $3K+ for this 7 years old mini van with 80k mileage. The previous owner is a woman who lives across the street from where she works and her children’ school. It’s their second family car. She is selling this to get a smaller car with better gas mileage as her children are grown up and she no longer needs a mini van to drive them to school.
It has been three weeks since we moved into the new apartment. Here is a picture of the exterior. Will take pictures of the interior when all the boxes are unpacked!
The apartment building is a four-plex, 2 lower unit and two upper unit, we are on the lower unit on the left. There is a detached covered garage on the left, one parking lot for each unit. It’s a two bedroom apartment with about 1200 square feet of space. We like the walk-in closet and the abundance of build-in storage in this apartment! We now have plenty of room to store all the stockpile and keep our mess concealed.
We decided to delay the plan to buy a house, so we could save more money for a bigger downpayment and a newer house.
The Commerce Chamber organized a city wide Garage/Yard Sale that called “Treasure of the attics”. Though we have just moved here two weeks ago and have not totally unpack, we decided to participate in it. Unlike most people who would be selling used furniture or used stuffs, I would be selling the stockpile of unused toiletries and groceries from my strategic shopping.
We asked for permission from our landlady, she gave us green light to have a yard sale, not garage sale. So, we setup a tent on the lawn beside the apartment building. We put out a few folding tables borrowed from the in laws and have the “merchandises” displayed with the price tags printed on white papers.
We did really well, we had our first “customer” at 7.30 a.m, before we even officially “open business”. People strolled in non stop and we made a little over $400 on the first day! We also got to meet many of our new neighbors.
On the second day (Saturday), the first customer didn’t show up until 10.30 a.m! I was wondering whether the signs were there, so I drove out to check. The signs were alright, guess most people slept in a little late on Saturday! Anyway, once we started to have people pulled up, it was non stop. There were a few repeated customers from Friday and a couple of big spender. Despite of the initial setback, we actually did pretty well on the second day too!!
Some people believe nothing is FREE in this world. I used to think the same, not until I learn to play the grocery game!!
Marketing and advertising are BIG in America. Businesses are constantly trying to sell you stuffs that you don’t need and commercially prepared junk food are disguised as “good and wholesome” ! The stores especially the grocery business is very competitive, they spent a lot of money advertising and playing psychological game with the consumers. The same item can be $1 this week, $2 next week and $1.50 another week! In order to win the game, I don’t shop like a typical consumer – buy what you need when you need them, I buy them when they are FREE or almost Free!
How do I do that? The grocery stores have a 12-week cycle in which everything in the store is at its lowest price point. The manufacturers also often run marketing promotions coincides with the cycle. When that happens, that’s the best time to buy that item for an even bigger discount using the manufacturer coupons, store discounts and manufacturers’ promotion that are available.
Let me give you an example:
Marie Callender’s frozen Pasta
Normal Price: $4.00
Store promotion: On sale for $2.50
Coupons available: $0.75 or $1.00
Manufacturer’s promotion : Buy $20 of participating products, get back $10 on your next shopping trip.
Scenario:
Buy 5 packs of frozen Pasta = 5 x $4 =$20 (hit the threshold for manufacturer’s promotion)
Sale price = 5 x $2.50 = $12.50
Minus coupons available, let say you have 2 $0.75 coupons and 3 $1.00 coupons.
$12.50 – 2 x $0.75 – 3 x $1.00 = $8.00
You pay $8.00 + $0.13 sale tax (of course you can pay with coupons you get from buying other products) and get back $10!
They pay you $2.00 to take home five packs of frozen pasta!!
Isn’t it a fun game? I enjoy being paid to take things from the store!
Well, it may not be healthy to eat frozen pasta all the time and no one has a BIG freezer to stock up a year worth of pasta!
But, I have gotten almost “everything” free or close to free by being a strategic shopper, including fresh vegetables, shrimps and Salmom! In the process, also gotten gift cards for Starbucks and different clothing stores that got me new summer clothes and T’s work clothes.
Some of the stuffs that I have gotten free:
It was almost 8.30 p.m when we reached home last night. I was too tired to prepare dinner, so we had frozen pasta meals. We don’t usually eat much of microwave frozen meals. However, we both like the Marie Callender’s Pasta Al Dente (frozen pasta) and Pot Pies.
The frozen meals are about $4 each and often go on sale for about $2 each. However, I picked up about ten of them when they were FREE after coupons during a ConAgra promotion few weeks ago! Would have gotten more if our freezer was not overflowing! We NEED another freezer!
We drove this baby home last night!
After T got off work at 2.00 p.m, we drove down to Oak Park in Chicago. After we got the mechanic to inspect it, T signed the papers and paid the seller with a cashier check. I drove the Toyota Camry and T drove this baby home last night!
It was 50 miles one way to go down to Oak Park. Driving home on highway I-88 was rather stressful and tiring I have not driven much on highways with fast moving commuters. The commuters crowd just got off work and the highways were quite packed, though the traffics was nothing like the kind of bumper to bumper traffics in KL/PJ!
We need to go to the Department of Motor Vehicle to get a new license plate and add the car onto our current auto policy. I got a quote online this morning, it costs about $150 to add another vehicle. It’s much more reasonable than the AAA auto insurance that T’s parents used to get. It saves us at least $300 half yearly!! It pays to shop around when it comes to getting auto insurance.
Where we used to live is a college town, a small town of 50k populations, half of that are students! We just moved two weeks ago, to an apartment at the next town bordering the college town. Both towns are small and surrounded by farm lands. Many foreign students who are from urbanized cities were shocked when they first arrived. They didn’t expect their university to be surrounded by farm lands and in a semi “rural” setting!
Being in a big farm town does not bother me, the smell of fertilizer and manure in the early spring when the farmers started planting does not bother me either. I love the fact that it’s a small town, but a small town with many facilities due to the presence of the university community. It’s a rather safe community where children can roam around, play in the yard and houses don’t have to be locked all the time!
May be because of the university, there are hospital and specialists clinics all over town. There are more than five grocery stores, departmetal stores and shopping malls a short 10-15 minutes drive from where we live , and tons more within 30 minutes drive. Living in small town that has big town facilities work for me, as of now.
We have a busy week ahead of us!
T is working till 2.00 p.m, we are driving down to Chicago to have a car inspected right after that. We have looked at the car and wanted to purchase it, so we are sending it to the workshop for a final inspection to make sure there is no major mechanical flaw that would be costly to repair! It everything goes well, this is the baby that we are hoping to bring home today!
It’s a 2002 Kia Sedona, a mini van that sits 7 passengers. We plan to take out the last row of seat and use it to haul stuffs for flea market or garage sales. Until I find a job or enrol in a course, selling stuffs at the flea markets or garage sales will be a part time job for me.
Tomorrow, T and I are going to Elton John and Billy Joe’s concert in Wrigley Field in Chicago. T has been rather excited about going to the concert since we got the tickets in January! I don’t care too much for the concert, especially we probably will not be home until after midnight. That also mean we will have a few hours of sleep before getting up on Friday morning to get ready for the Yard Sale. There is a city wide yard sale in our town and I will be putting out things at our lawn and yard!
Three months of neglects, it’s overgrown with weeds!!
Time seems to go by so fast day by day. We are in the process of unpacking after the move last week! Just got the cable and internet hooked up yesterday.
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