Insanely Cheap Cereal!

Ok, so yet another post that has nothing to do with me being a teacher :) I promise, I'll get around to it. But this week, I stumbled across the craziest thing at the grocery store, and I took full advantage of it. I'm still coming down from the high of getting name-brand, really-good-stuff cereal for 49 cents a box!!!

Here's how it worked. First, the Brookshire's grocery store near my school ran a special on 6 types of General Mills cereal this week...99 cents a box. A really good deal to start with. Some weeks ago, I started printing off coupons, and printed off several that were $1 off 2 boxes of General Mills cereals. The Brookshire's ad said nothing about coupons, so I assumed they would accept them...and boy, did they. Between my little brother, myself, and my husband, we bought 40 boxes of cereal 4 boxes at a time (the limit was 5, but with the $1 off 2 boxes, we had to go with 4 at a time) over several shopping trips. Now, here's the great part (yes, it gets better than Cheerios for 49 cents a box!!!!)...for each 3 boxes of cereal we bought, the register printed out a coupon for a FREE GALLON OF MILK!! Plus, for each transaction, we also got a coupon for $2 off 5 boxes of General Mills Cereal. The coupon loop never ends!!!! So, we kept going through the line, kept getting more coupons, until we finally had more than enough. We've given the rest of our $1 off 2 boxes coupons to a friend, and we have called all our friends with small children to tell them about the awesome deal. I'm even offering them my "$2 off 5 boxes" coupons to get them started on the savings cycle! We now have enough cereal to get us through probably the next calendar year, and enough milk to get us through the summer, even though we will have to freeze it all!

Here's the financial breakdown:

40 boxes of cereal at $2.79 = $111.60
8 gallons of milk at $3.75 = $30.00
(Think I lost a couple of coupons) :(
Total $141.60

What we paid: $19.60

For a savings of: $122.00

And I know...buying something just because it is an incredible deal doesn't save you a dime if you wouldn't normally buy it. But that's the thing...we do buy milk and cereal every single week. It is my hubby's favorite breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack. With each box containing 15 servings, and counting the free milk (or, not counting milk at all, since you can snack on cereal), the cost per serving comes out to 3.27 cents. Insane!

Now I've just got to go back after I finish summer school each day next week and pick up a few of those free gallons of milk at a time!