Sunday, January 9, 2011

Rite Aid paid me $16.80 today!

Rite Aid paid me $16.80 today to take all of this off their hands (minus the cat).  Here's how...

Rite Aid is currently offering a BOGO sale on Special K cereal.  So, they are two for $4.79.  I had a bunch of the Special K BOGO coupons (nine, to be exact).  The Special K coupon is only good for up to $4.49 so the consumer has to pay the difference - in this Rite Aid scenario it comes to $0.30. This seemed like a good deal so I decided I would use four of my BOGO coupons and get eight boxes of Special K, which should last me for at least six months.

Here is where it gets interesting....

I went to Store #1 and bought four boxes of cereal (using two coupons) and paid $0.60 (they did not have enough for me to buy more so i knew I would have to go to another store).  But, to my surprise, I got $4.00 in UPS Rewards!  Suddenly this deal became a money maker!  It was then that I decided that I would be using ALL of my coupons and I would donate the extra boxes of cereal to the local food bank.

I decided to split the rest of my purchases up over three more stores in order to avoid clearing the shelves at any one particular store (this is only good etiquette, I think).  I have easily a dozen Rite Aids within five miles of my house so this really wasn't difficult to do.

I went to Store #2 and bought six boxes (using three coupons) and the price was FREE, plus $6.00 in UPS Rewards.  This particular store did not charge me the overage between the coupon and the actual price.  

At Store #3 I bought four boxes (using two coupons) and again the price was FREE (I was getting lucky!), plus $4.00 in UPS Rewards. 

Finally, I bought four boxes at Store #4 (using two coupons) and was charged $0.60 - which upon more investigation is how I believe the deal is supposed to work (but I am not complaining about the free boxes from Stores #2 and #3).  Plus I received $4.00 in UPS Rewards.

So, at the end of the day I paid $1.20, I received $18.00 in UPS Rewards, and I got 18 boxes of cereal!  I will keep eight boxes and donate the other ten to the local food bank.  I will also be submitting this data to Jeffrey at The Penny Experiment so it can be added to his total (this is an awesome cause... check it out if you have a chance).

And how does this impact my $50 a month for food challenge?  Well, including the $1.20 I spent today, I now have spent $17.59 and I have $50.41 left to spend ($32.41 cash plus $18.00 UPS Rewards that must be spent at Rite Aid).  Yes, that's right... I am now actually ahead for the month! 

Have you gotten any good deals this week?

8 comments:

  1. you had a great trip and I am glad that you are sharing your bounty with the food shelf. Way to go girl.
    Our Walgreens has 2 for 5.00 and with my coupon b1g1 free it is $1.25 a box. Still good. I was only able to print two coupons since I have only one of the computers hooked to the printer.

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  2. PS love the cat. wow what a doll. I lost my baby of 17 years in October. Still not over not having my spooky the cat any more. Kiss your sweety for me. thanks for stopping over at my blog

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  3. Great job. I am hoping to do better this year. I have not had an easy time yet.

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  4. WOW! That's a lot of cereal LOL... even the cat is like wow!

    Are you going to be able to eat it all before it expires?

    HS

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  5. HS, I don't know if I can eat the cereal before it expires or not, but I am not going to try. The bulk of it will be going to the local food bank. And good news - Special K has reset their coupon so I will be able to get more cereal (and UPS Rewards!), so even more cereal will be going to the food bank!

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  6. I love this kind of thing! I did the same thing for Corn Flakes last year at Safeway. I ended up donating lots of Corn Flakes and making money. Awesome!

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  7. Awesomeness! I love it! Great donation opportunity. I bought 10 boxes, I think I will just give some to friends.

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