Posted By FarmerJ on September 1, 2009

I love it when a good deal becomes an awesome deal ~ and when you’re down to the last item on the pantry shelf, that awesome deal becomes a phenomenal blessing!

Dominic had reported we were down to our last two boring boxes of cereal; a box of plain Cheerios and a box of Total.  Okay, I’ll admit that’s not too exciting.  Every time I’d come home, he’d peer into the shopping bag to see if there was any cereal.  [I can't blame him.  I remember full well that a bowl of cold cereal after school is a teenager's essential food group item.  We're talkin' like the top of the pyramid food group.]  No, I didn’t buy any cereal because there wasn’t any on sale ~ and I didn’t have any Monopoly money for cereal.  You know that for me to purchase something without Monopoly money is like the dentist’s drill without Novocaine for others!

Well, patience in purchasing paid off.  Our local grocery store had a sale on Malt-O-Meal cereal that caught my attention.  It was a deal where you could stack a manufacturer’s coupon on top of a store coupon and come out with a bag of cereal for .86 cents.  Not too shabby.  So I set about printing the limit of two manufacturer’s coupons from every computer I could get my hands on.  I headed to town ready to do battle with the registers.  Heehee!

However, I decided to stop at Wal-Mart first to pick up a couple of items before heading to the grocery store.  What a great decision that turned out to be!  As I was heading back to the dairy section, I came upon a huge display in the center of the main aisle.  What was the display, you ask?  It was bags of Malt-O-Meal cereal on sale for $1.00!  Whoa.  Doubting what I was seeing, I scooped up a bag and ran to the nearest price scanner hanging on a post.  Bleep.  $1.00.  Oh my gracious!

There was no way to contain my excitement.  I know I was smiling from ear to ear as I ran back to the cereal display.  What I don’t know is if I actually vocalized the “Oooooohhhhhh, goody, goody, goody,” that was streaming through my head.  As you might be able to imagine, those cellophane cereal bags were flyin’!

The dial on the ‘Coolness Factor’ gauge was fully pegged when I left the register.  Twelve bags of cereal scanned through; $12.00 in Monopoly money scanned through; an automated voice at the self checkout telling me to take my items and thanking me for shopping at Wal-Mart.  No, no, thank you!  Believe me, it was my pleasure to walk in, grab twelve bags of cereal, exchange twelve pieces of paper [recycled scrap paper, mind you] and walk out not having spent one cent!  That’s my kind of shopping.

While I may not fully be back in the saddle, I’ve at least got one foot in the stirrup.  For the month of August, we ring in with:

* Total Number of Items for Free = 14
* Total Number of Items for $.01 – .50 = 25
* Total Amount of Rebates = 0

August Monopoly Money Savings = $61.64

Year-to-Date Monopoly Money Savings = $944.95

Cha-ching!

Categories: Simply Saving
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