I had a really great lunch hour on Friday. I’m lucky enough to have two stores within walking distance of where I work - well, actually they’re both owned by the same parent company, but the one closest to where I work has more “upscale” meat, seafood, produce, and deli departments. Of course, the “upscale” stuff normally is not what I’m after, but they have regular groceries, too.
When I browsed the week’s sale flyer on Thursday, I noticed that they had Bic Soleil razors (4 pack) and Bic Comfort 3 (4 pack) razors on sale for $2.49. The previous Sunday coupon flyers had $2 off coupons for both of those, which would bring the cost down to 49¢ per 4 pack. I do have a store in this grocery chain in my neighborhood, but apparently I have a lot of frugal shoppers in my neighborhood as well. Loss leader items like these disappear immediately from the shelves of my neighborhood store - I’ve have very poor success in finding them. For whatever reason, there seems to be less competition with the upscale shoppers, which is a very good thing for me.
I set off with my grocery club card, razor coupons, my last Special K protein water free bottle coupon, (I really need to try that stuff one of these days. People just keep giving me coupons for it…) and two one-dollar bills in my pocket. All three items are taxable, so I knew it would go over $1.
My final cost was $1.26 - not bad for 2 4-packs of razors and a bottle of designer water. But the thrill wasn’t over just yet. On my way out, I picked up one of the free local newspapers that are displayed just inside the door. Inside was a very good coupon for Ace Hardward this weekend: 50% off a single, regularly priced item of $30 or less. It just happened that we were planning on going to Ace on Saturday anyway, to pick up Ice Melt pellets. The coupon saved us $6.75!
As an added bonus, the half-hour walk (15 minutes each way) adds 30 minutes to my daily exercise total. See what I call this a power lunch?