Home Made Simple Coupon Booklet

Go here to request a coupon booklet. For those not familiar with these coupon booklets, you'll receive it by mail in a few weeks and it will include money saving coupons for all the brands you see listed above. In the past there has also been a coupon for a FREE Cascade Rinse Agent!

Free Buddy Bars

The coupon is for $3 off 3 Johnsons products, and the buddies soap bars should be just under $1 at Walmart and Target making them free. These are really great because they have a mesh cover making them easier to hold onto for little ones. Or, you can use these on the small (travel sized) First Aid Kits which are priced at $1 at Wal-Mart, CVS, and Target to get three of those for free

Go here for Firefox or here for Internet Explorer to get the coupon.

Free Magazine Subscriptions

Rewards Gold is offering a free two-year subscription to Shape Magazine. If you have not signed up for these free magazine offers from Rewards Gold then let me tell you that they are legitimate offers, I've done this in the past and currently have a free subscription to Martha Stewart Living Magazine from Rewards Gold. All you need to do is fill out a short survey. They are free, you will not be billed and do not need to enter any Debit/CC information and they do show up in your mailbox.

Other free magazine subscriptions currently available are:

Business Week Magazine

Muscle and Fitness Magazine

Car and Driver Magazine (sounds like great free gifts for dad!)

(Thanks Common Sense With Money!)

Free Chocolate Fridays!

Go here this morning and get a coupon for FREE Mars chocolate! The site has been slow until later on in the morning, then it's pretty easy to get one! Remember- you can get 4 per household, so even if you got one last week, go and get another!
The first week's coupon took a few weeks to come in the mail, but the next two came only a few days later.

Free Panty from Victoria's Secret

Victoria’s Secret is offering a free panty when you become a Victoria’s Secret fan on Facebook. I know chances are pretty good you already are on Facebook, so just become a fan and get your coupon for a free panty. No purchase necessary. Coupon expires on June 5th, 09 and it’s good up to $7.50 in value. (Thanks Common Sense With Money!)

Canadian P&G Coupons

Brandsaver.ca is back with some brand new coupons, over $70 in savings!

You select which coupons you would like to receive and then they mail them out to you.

Here are the coupons on Brandsaver:
- Bounty
- Tide

- Pantene
- Clearblue
- Bounce
- Cascade
- Charmin
- Ivory Snow
- Cheer
- Clairol
- Crest
- Duracell
- Covergirl
- Febreze
- Gain
- Gillette
- Head & Shoulders
- Herbal Essences
- Iams
- Mach3
- Mr. Clean
- Olay
- Oral-B
- Pampers diapers and wipes
- Pepto Bismol
- Swiffer
- Ultra Downy
- Venus

Click here to order your coupons, free of charge and mailed right to your front door!

Two Offers for Canadian Readers

Sign up here for the free monthly P&G Everyday Solutions newsletter and receive savings, free sample offers, and more.

Sign up here for the free monthly e-newsletter from Home Made Simple and get free samples, special offers, and coupons from brands like Dawn® and Febreze®!

(Thanks Money-Saving Mom!)

Price Points

It's important to know your personal price points (the point at which a product is a price you are willing to pay) because it will help govern your spending and to help you get the best deals. For example I won't usually spend more than 75 cents for a box of cereal (and never more than $1), more than 25 cents for a tube of toothpaste or 30 cents for an individual yogurt cup. If you are unaware of what a good starting point for various grocery items are here are two sources for price lists, with accompanying ratings:

Savvy Shopper Price List. The link is contained on the 7th comment down on the page.
(Note: You must sign up as a member on the site, and be logged in to access the price list, but it's in Excel so I'd recommend downloading it for future reference since it can be hard to find anything again on this site.)

Pinching Your Pennies Price Book.

Each contains a list of common household and grocery items and the top two or three price ranges. It's worth comparing the two lists, because they vary slightly and your own personal price points will also vary from them but it's a good starting out point. I even keep a copy in my coupon binder so that if I am at the store and want to know, for example, if a certain item on "clearance" is actually a good price or not then I have a good reference guide (although after awhile you'll know most item's price points by memory). I especially recommend this as you are starting out and trying to establish your own price points.

You may find that when you are starting out your price points are higher because you haven't yet been able to build up a good supply/pantry/food storage to be able to wait out a good sale. But you will find that pretty quickly as you do start accumulating more you can lower your price points so that you no longer have to buy toothpaste when you can't squeeze another drop out of that scrunched up tube and pay whatever the store is charging that week, nor do you have to pay $1.00 (an ok sale price) or even 50 cents/tube ( a pretty good sale price) because you have enough to grab a new tube from your pantry and you can get more toothpaste to replenish the stockpile only when it's free, or even a little bit of an overage!

That's the power of the price point, and it's worth knowing.

Another good article to read about "The Buy Ahead Principle" (aka building up a good pantry/food storage/stock piling) is found Money-Saving Mom's Blog here.

K-Mart Double Coupons

Many KMart locations next week will be doubling manufacturers coupons, up to $2. Just enter your zipcode in here to see next weeks ad. If your store is doubling coupons then if will have something like this on the front page:

These are the rules for doubling coupons at K-Mart:
-Manufacturer Coupons up to $2
-Does not include Kmart Store Coupons
-Does not include Kmart Pharmacy Store Coupons
-Does not include copies of manufacturer coupons
-Limit 10 total coupons per customer per day
-Doubled up to current retail price of a single item

While K-Mart's prices are normally quite high and out of my price points, in the past I've found many things there free or almost free after double coupons.

Weekly Shopping Trip

Well this week was a little higher than usual (I try to only spend $50-60 each week for groceries). Part of the reason why is because I found Pampers diapers on clearance at Target, which when I matched up a target coupon and a manufacturers coupon I had made them a really good deal. It was 116 size 5 Pampers Baby Dry, it cost just over $17 which works out to less than 15 cents/diaper (which is a really good price); and although I don't need diapers right now these along with my others should last almost the rest of the way through the summer!

Another good find was the Mug RootBeer & Sierra Mist (both Pepsi products) for $1. I have a rebate for $5 when you buy 4 Pepsi Brand 2-L, so I made $1 buying those 4. You can find these rebate forms at Walgreens stores, and my Walmart had these for $1 this week if you're interested.

We also got a ridiculous amount of cream cheese, and I'm definitely seeing some tasty cheesecake in our near future! I also stocked up on tortillas because I've discovered a serious lack of mexicans out here in Wisconsin and hence a serious lack of mexican food (and the stuff they do have at the store is way more expensive than it was in Utah).

I'm still struggling to find a good and inexpensive source for produce (I miss Sunflower Farmers market!!), so right now I'm paying about twice what I did in Provo...but I try to use that stuff as fillers in my double coupon sales. There is also a local farmers market opening up in a few weeks out here, which I can't wait for!

Anyways, here's my grocery haul:

Before Sales, Coupons & Rebate: Over $245

My total out of pocket: $96 (61% savings)