Creating a Monster

A couple of months ago, I somehow stumbled upon Deal Finding Mom. At the time, there was a promotion at a local grocery store where you could get $15 off your next purchase if you bought $30 worth of certain items.

The thing was, you didn't really have to spend $30.

Let me try to explain. One of the items was cake mix. The regular price of the cake mix was $2 a box, but it was on sale for $1. So I could buy 15 boxes of cake mix for $15, and because it was worth $30 before the sale, I got a coupon for $15. Which I then used to go buy another 15 boxes of cake mix, for free. And got the coupons again. And used them to buy free stuff again. You see how it works?

There were only a few items that worked. But I still have soup, frozen vegetables, cake mix, and boxed Au Gratin potatoes from that promo. And it happened three months ago.

After that, I was hooked.

The store recently ran the promo again and this time, I knew how to work it a bit better than before. The trick is to combine the items on sale with coupons to make the price even lower than $15 out of pocket, while still getting $30 worth of stuff.

The most recent promo ran for a week and I was at that store every day, sometimes twice a day, sometimes hitting multiple stores. Then I would come home and spend hours scheming and planning what I was going to get on the next trip. I started dreaming of groceries and coupons. Jeremy teased me about my addiction to Slickdeals saying, "It's like coupon porn. It's cou-porn."

Lest you think I'm filling my house with cake mix and boxed potatoes, let me give you the full breakdown of what I "bought:"

34 boxes of cereal
60 diapers
180 baby wipes
66 nursing pads
4 boxes Bisquick
1 box quick potatoes
2 boxes granola bars
20 yogurts
1 Pantene shampoo
1 Pantene conditioner
8 Bounty giant rolls paper towels
18 rolls Charmin TP
1 Gillette shave gel
1 100oz Tide
1 container French Vanilla coffee
2 tubs of cake frosting (to go with all the free cake mix from last time!)
2 big containers CoffeeMate creamer
60 juice boxes
9 boxes of Gogurt
5 cans of soup
2 mini chocolate cakes
1 banana colada juice drink (mixed with rum to celebrate the bonanza!)

The retail value of the above? $390.67

Guess how much I spent. I dare you.

$41.54

And? AND!!? I still have $15 to spend on my next trip.

I'm pretty sure I won't have to buy cereal, coffee, or paper towels for the remainder of the time we live in Massachusetts. And I won't need to buy creamer, juice, toilet paper, or laundry soap for a couple of months at least.

Oh, and we'll be eating pancakes every weekend. For a while.

There were lots of people working this sale the way I was and many doing a much, much better job. I bought all of the above in 12 transactions. There were people who did 12 transactions per day. I can only imagine what their garages must look like.

During the week of the sale, I abandoned not only my own blog but all of my usual blog reading. Now that it's over, I'm happy to have my evenings back but feeling a little bit of coupon withdrawal.

Coupons are the new crack.
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