Today is the last day of Safeway’s Summer Savings Marathon promotion. I actually was not going to take advantage of that promotion, because it’s hard to do it without knowing what participated products are unless you go to the store and browse the whole store. But I needed to go there today for a couple of sale items, especially to stockpile the 9 gram carbohydrates Special K cereal, and when I saw that it happened to be one of the participated Summer Savings Marathon promotion products, I was very happy to take the advantage of the promotion: the minimum $5 reward coupon when you buy 9 to 14 items. So I got as many as boxes of Special K cereal that I could reach on the shelf, 7 boxes, and I bought 2 bags of Frittos chips on sale for $1.88 per bag, which totaled 9 items, and I got my $5 coupon at check out. If I have not been aware of the promotion, I would have missed out on this.

Last time when Safeway had free movie tickets promotion-2 free movie tickets when you purchased $40 worth of participated items, I got 2 free movie tickets the same way. It happened that I saw something I needed to stockpile was on sale and was one of the participated items, so I made sure I got $40 worth of qualified items.

I used to think that Safeway made their promotions too hard to appeal to people. But now I started to see it as a game, a grocery game. It’s kind of fun. As I’m getting more disciplined at shopping and getting better at stretching the value of my dollar, it’s getting more and more like a game to me. And I’m far from being an expert. You have to read Gina’s posts on Safeway Summer Savings Marathon promotion on Mommy Making Money. She is amazing. She did 6 trips to Safeway during Summer Savings Marathon promotion and saved tons of money.