September Savings

September's Safeway savings doesn't SEEM that dramatic, but it has a good ending, hah!

For those of you who are new, I absolutely adore Safeway's "just for u" program - I load their coupons onto my regular savings card, and they give me special prices on things based on my purchases. They'll also even give me free stuff, like new products. Super cool, huh?

I'm pretty OCD when it comes to money, so a few months ago I started keeping track of how much money I save just using this simple couponing (plus whatever coupons I might find in the store or online).

This month, Jeff and I spent $232.57 on groceries, and saved $126.47, giving us a savings percentage of 35.22% for the month. Over the last six months, we've saved $868.05, an average of 39.70% per month!!! Wow!

Safeway's started an awesome new program this month, too - now, they've been giving away $0.03 off / gallon of gas at their gas stations for people with their club cards pretty much the whole time I've lived in California. Most of the time, if you make a $50 total purchase at the store, they give you a $0.10/gallon discount. Sometimes they allow you to stack them, sometimes they don't.

Their new promotion is amazing. Rather than make one $50 purchase for the discount, you have to spend $100 total - which, while it's more, works out better for us, because we seldom make large grocery purchases. The deal gets even sweeter - if you buy a $25 gift card to a store other than Safeway, you automatically get the $0.10/gal discount - quadruple points!

How do you take advantage of this? You buy enough gift cards to pay for your entire window replacement project - stacking up $1/gallon off in discounts, the maximum they allow you to use at once - and save $11+ the next time you buy gas!!! Hooray! As long as they're doing this promotion, I'm going to be doing all of my spending at Safeway first, to buy gift cards, then using those gift cards at the stores I'd normally shop at.

The only downside I've found to this so far is that gift card purchases don't seem to count towards cash back on my Discover card - but hey. $1/gal is better savings than the 1% I'd be getting back doing all the spending on my Discover!