The Simple Wealth

Making money by buying things

This was a totally an alien idea to me until I started to read Mommy Making Money, The “Cent”sible Sawyer, Money Saving Mom. For example something is on sale for 50 cents and you have a $1 coupon, then you make 50 cents by buying it. I did not know such thing existed. After I began aware of its existence, very soon it became a reality to me. It’s all within your mind. If your mind knows it’s possible, then it’s possible.

Yesterday I went to Walgreens, I made $1 by buying 2 Clairol Natural Instincts Hair Color. Here is how: last week I went to Walgreens to buy Loreal Hair Color using 1$5-off-2 coupon from newspaper insert and 1 $5 -off-two coupon from Walgreens Easy Saver Catalog, and at check out, I got a $5 catalina coupon for 1 box of Natural Instincts Hair Color. Last Sunday when I got my newspaper, I browsed the insert, and saw a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for Natural Instincts Hair Color from the manufacture, and this week, that brand of hair color is on sale in Walgreens for 2 for $12 plus you get $2 register reward for next purchase for anything you want. 2 boxes of hair color is $12, minus the BOGO manufacture coupon ($6), minus $5 the catalina coupon I got last week, so the total cost is $1, and I got $2 register reward coupon, so I made $1. But I did have to pay sales tax, so I more or less just got them for free.

So you see how it works?

By the way, if you use this brand of hair color, the sale price, 2 for $12, is good until August 2nd. You may not have a $5 catalina coupon, but if you have a BOGO coupon from last Sunday’s newspaper, that will make it 2 for $6, which is still a very good deal.

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.

Coupons are great!

I have been learning where to find coupons and how to use coupons lately. Remember my first post about saving money on grocery more than 6 months ago, I said that I didn’t think using coupons saves too much money. I was wrong! It reminded me of a post on Early Retirement Extreme: Are pro-bloggers like professors? not long ago, among the three types of bloggers he categorized, I consider myself the third type, a student, who has learned a little and is still learning on the subject I have chosen to blog. There has been ups and downs since I started blogging, and in my down time or when I was very busy and trying to keep my posting regularly at the same time, the thought that maybe I should focus on becoming a ‘professor’ on the subject of financial freedom before I blog came across my mind a few times. But after all, blogging does help me to learn. So just keep going, just keep going.

Shopping at Walmart

I didn’t shop at Walmart for grocery until recently I discovered two great blogs that offer a lot of money saving tips: Money Saving Mom and The “Cent”sible Sawyer. After reading their posts on Walmart deals for this week, I printed out some online coupons from their links, and headed there to shop.

What I bought:

1 bag of cat food: $4.18 minus $4 coupon=$0.18

1 pack of 500 sheet HP paper $3.97 minus $3 coupon=$0.97

2 containers of Huggies wipes: $2.38*2 minus $3 newspaper coupon for 2=$1.76 for two

1 box of cereal: $3.14 minus $2 coupon=$1.14

Kids bubble bath: $1.74 no coupon

2 Johnson’s buddies soaps: $0.94 each minus $2 coupon for two. But after I left the store I realized one coupon did not go through, my guess was the coupon for the soaps.

So I used 5 coupons but 1 did not go through. I’m very thrilled. Coupon work! I saved $12 by using coupons.

This was the first time that I used more than 2 coupons, and according to Walmart’s coupon policy, you can use up to 40 coupons without approval by their manager. 40 coupons! Oh, my! I’m still too new as a coupon user.