Monday, March 16, 2009

Oats, meat, and money, oh my!

What a whirlwind of a weekend it's been. Yesterday I ventured out with the two youngest children, while the oldest kept Daddy company at home. We hit up Vons for some good deals-$48 of groceries, for a low of $21. We then made our way to Target and took advantage of the wonderful buy 5, get $5 Quaker deal. I've been holding onto 15 $1 coupons for awhile now, hoping on a good deal to come around. I walked out of Target, with only the quaker cereal, 10 boxes for $5 (after coupons and the $10 in gift cards). It was a really good deal, considering I priced out the oatmeal, and given the typical cost of a lb of oatmeal bought at the generic store brand price, I still came out ahead by $3, if not more. Yay for oatmeal!
I made my way to Super Target this morning, taking full advantage of their Super Target $2 off roast and steak coupon, combined it with their meat sale of $1.99/lb and walked out with three huge steaks, each sightly over 1 lb, and it cost me $2.30(since each package was $2 and some change). That's good meat, and will be sliced up for meat sandwiches, fajita pie, and stew. Yay for meat!
Finally, our annual review on our mortgage came today in the mail. Our monthly mortgage bill is going down by $61.97, and we overpaid based on our estimated county taxes, so we also received a check for $830.49! Wow, I was not expecting that. Now I'm faced with how to proceed with the lowered mortgag (paying the same as we do now, or apply the difference to our debt payment every month, or use that extra $61.97 towards savings, as well as this check (make an extra payment on the credit card, or reinvest it in our savings account?) Decisions, decisions....
The week is building up, no sub jobs, but I have independant contracting work to do, so that should help get us ahead. There aren't any plans to eat out this week, unless I pick up a free lunch. We managed to eat at home all day yesterday (even with shopping), so that turned out well. We've spent $60 on groceries this week (including Super Target, Costco, Vons, and Kingsburg Supermarket), and I think we're set for the week. I'm holding out on using more coupons, but may hit up Super Target again later this week for more oatmeal and meat. We have the room for both, and the Super Target coupon for meat, well, thats a smoking hot deal!

I'm excited about the deals, that energizes me. BTW, I was contacted by a news reporter after posting on a local message board about couponing (can you believe people think its not worth it to use coupons?) Anyways, she replied, looking for hardcore couponers since she's doing a story on going grocery shopping in this economy. I wrote in (completely thinking she'd never respond), and she called this morning! Yay! I'm excited and nervous at the same time, are people going to think I'm a freak for doing what I do? Then again, I did score pounds of beef for pennies, and now have a decent supply of oatmeal for the boys, maybe I do have valuable tips?

1 comment:

Melanie said...

Congrats on the unexpected windfall. I love those!! Good luck on deciding what to do with the extra cash.