Sunday, March 28, 2010

A typical day in the life of bargain shopper

Friday, March 26th :On the way to dine at a "mystery shop" for a pizza business, stopped at Walgreens for promo on large Olay Quench body lotion on sale for $7.99 (reg. $9.99), with free in-shower body wash ($4.99 value). Had already printed out rebate form off of heyitsfree.net to recover cost of body lotion (ends in April). After rebate and promo body wash that is a $13.00 plus gain on two HABA items. Mailed rebate Saturday.
Across the street from Walgreens is a CVS where I stopped for my online coupon freebie, sent via email (sign up for email alerts on deals and coupons-even one for your birthday!).
Choice of CVS bodywash or box of their candy-a $2 value. Since I was awash in free body wash I went for the candy as my DH is candyman and how could I refuse him a free treat?
We then headed for pizza buffet where dined on mystery shopper's dime (pay upfront then get reemburshed plus paid for time). So the day's freebie total for me was:
$13.00 (tax excluded)
$1.50 (candy on sale)
$4.49 (pizza buffet)
_________
$18.99
does not include the free Raisin Bran cookbooklet received via snailmail (thanks again to heyitsfree site for great clearing house for freebies).
Later at home I relaxed and read my Oprah magazine subscription from Amazon for a mere $5.00 a year (about cost of one issue on newstand.).
Saturday DH scored a bottle of KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce for free as store has it on sale this week for 99 cents and coupon from manufacturer is for $1 off.
Some stores treat these differently. Some will only give you UP TO the value of the item on sale so that particular store credited item for 99 cents not full dollar. Other stores/cashiers will scan it and take the full amount off regardless of what the item is on sale for, so expect this when you go in to get different policies. Still, item is free except for tax. (I used to live in Denver and there was no sales tax on food-wonder if city has changed that policy?).
So I am living life large on little outlay.