Today was a good grocery shopping day.

After coming home from grocery shopping last week, I noticed two errors on my receipt. My watermelon came up full price(it was supposed to be on sale) and my cashier rang up an onion as a peeled one instead of a regular one(peeled ones are more expensive). My store has a policy that states that if something isn’t rung up for the correct price, they’ll refund the cost of one of those items. So, I saved my receipt, brought it back with me today and I got $7.90 back on my credit card. Woohoo…a free watermelon and onion! That’s Happy Thing #1 for today.

Happy Thing #2 for today is that I got 12 boxes of cereal for a really great price. In last week’s Sunday paper, there was a $10 rebate on 10 Kellogg food items. I’d heard that this could be combined with a rebate from Rite-Aid and you could get ten boxes for something like $3 after rebates and coupons. Happily, I managed to do a little better than that and I didn’t even have to stop at Rite Aid(which saved me time and gas…yay!). At Weis this week, various Kellogg’s cereals were on sale for $1.99, and to sweeten the deal, if you bought 12 boxes, they were giving a $10 coupon off anything, to be used on the next shopping trip. That’s like cash to me, since I shop there every week. As an added bonus, the cereals on sale weren’t entirely void of nutrition…frosted mini-wheats were included in the sale, and so were some unsweetened cereals like Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies.

I bought 12 boxes for a total of $23.88. Then I used two $1 coupons which makes my total $21.88. I sent in my $10 rebate, which brings it down to $11.88. And when you add in my $10 store coupon, the 12 boxes of cereal will only have set me back $1.88. Ahhh. I love deals like this.

Upon further reflection, I could have used one more coupon and brought my total down to $.88. That would have meant switching two of my boxes of mini-wheats for some kind of new cookie cereal, though, and I’m thinking the mini-wheats were a better use of the dollar. 😉

On a somewhat unrelated note, I was reminded today that I reaaaally need to put my calculator back into my purse. Lately I’ve spent way too much time standing in the grocery aisle trying to figure out what items are the best deal. At right are my calculations from today…I was trying to figure out whether three four-packs of Cottonelle toilet paper were cheaper per roll than two 20-packs. This would be a little tricky to begin with, and it was further complicated by the fact that there was a $2 off deal on the larger packs and that I could use two $1 coupons on both the larger sizes and the smaller size. After some long division I figured out that the larger packs were cheaper but not by much, and I opted not to lug home 40 double rolls of toilet paper. While this kind of thing might be good for my brain, it also ends up making my grocery trips longer than they need to be(never a good thing with four kids in tow), and it makes me less prone to really figuring out what the best deal is. My calculator is now in my purse and while I’ll still figure out the simpler stuff mentally, it’ll be wonderful to have the calculator there for backup.