This week my shopping strategy was all about taking advantage of the $20 gift card deal at Albertsons. (Spend $100 on gift cards with the exception of Visa, MasterCard, American Express & Albertsons cards and receive a $20 coupon good on your next purchase). I purchased $500 in gift cards this week to stores or sites I know I’ll be spending my money at over the next few months.  Stores like Home Depot,Nike,Ebay,and Amazon.com.

In return I earned a total of $100 in Albertsons store coupons. I don’t include my retail gift cards in my oop grocery total, because after all…  I don’t buy my groceries at Home Depot.  However, if I can stretch my grocery budget by purchasing gift cards to stores I plan to shop at anyway… you can bet I’m going to take advantage of it.  Because in my opinion… every penny counts no matter where it comes from.

Here’s what I was able to pick up with my (5) $20 coupons.

24lbs of chicken tenders for $1.94 (after (2) $20 coupons).

Bagels, cream cheese,bananas,apples,cantaloupe, snap peas, and carrots .71 (after $20 coupon).

5 lbs of butter, 3 FREE Seattle’s Best Coffees (free with the coupon from the 6/5 SS {Seattle}) and 1 sugar snap pea. FREE (after $20 coupon).  Why did I buy just 1 snap pea?  Because I was .05 short of $20.  It just so happened that the single snap pea cost me .05… just in case you were thinking I sat there and weighed every single pea in the produce department until I found just the right one.

2 Caesar salad kits, fancy mozzarella cheese, dipping chocolate,2 boxes of pectin 1 free (wyb2 pectin coupon) bag of brown sugar.  I paid .25 (after $20 coupon)

Cantaloupe and baby watermelons were on sale last week at Fred Meyer for $2 each… plus I picked up a quart of whip cream for a grand total of $9.79.

I also stopped by Costco for 2 gallons of milk and a half gallon of 1/2 and 1/2 and paid $8.58.

I was so excited about the FREE Ken’s Steak House salad dressing this week at Albertsons… I was able to pre-order  my favorite varieties so they were ready for me to pick up on Sunday morning when I went in to do my double coupon shopping.  I paid $1.37 for everything you see above. I only had to pay for the beef… everything else was free with a double coupons.

And last but not least… if you’re like me… and like to occasionally use one of your free Starbucks gift cards you’ve earned with your Swagbucks points to buy yourself a little treat to help make your double coupon trip a little more exciting… then you should know you can currently pick up a free 10 song summer mix at Starbucks when you buy one of their yummy frappuccinos.  Yay for double coupons… and double yay for free Starbucks.

Total spent this week $21.27

Total spent year to date $545.16

So how about you?  What was your favorite grocery item you placed in your cart last week?

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