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Sunday, October 30, 2011

$HAMELESS $AVINGS - And another reason why the manager's special shelf rocks it hard

I scored again. This time it was on Halloween candy.... except for I bought it like 2 months ago. As I've explained before, I'm shoppertunistic. This means that I shop for deals and buy based on sales and available coupons, not necessarily purchasing things that I need at that moment. And because I'm pretty good at planning ahead, I'll find deals on things sometimes months in advance. This not only saves money in the log run, but also saves time because I'm avoiding the frantic search for the perfect dress that I need next weekend or gift that I need for a birthday that week, etc. In addition, by stocking up and buying things based on sales and being prepared, it prevents me from having to make special trips to pick up things, saving time and gas money.
Also I need to save money because I want this.
Over the summer, as I was doing my usual perusing of the manager's special shelf at my local Kroger, I came across some packages of mini snickers. They were mixed bags of both regular snickers and those of the almond variety. They were $1.39 a bag! Perfect for Halloween, don't you think?! So I purchased 4 bags, starting my Halloween candy total out at $5.56.
For those of you who can't see, it says the original price was $2.87, meaning I got them for more than 50% off!
4 bags makes for a nice full basket, and the gold mixed with the silvery Snickers bars is very Halloween-y
Around the same time of year, I was digging through the shelves at my HEB and found organic Amy's fruit snacks for $2 each box. Just a side tip: I'm always on the lookout for good deals on food that I can donate to my local school's food pantry. My friend is a social worker there, and I feel good about donating to an organization that I feel connected to. So look out for retired items or dented boxes/cans etc of foods that are food pantry worthy. I tend to buy a lot of cereals, granola bars and hearty soups like chili that will really make a difference in the tummy of a hungry kid. And I try to stay away from the veggies because it seems like veggie cans are commonly donated items.
So back to the organic fruit snacks. I bought 2 boxes to put toward my Halloween candy supply, bringing my total to $9.56.

Side Note - I think I'm going to do a little social experiment this year to figure out who's got the hippie kids who pass up the chocolate and pick out the organic fruit snacks.... looking forward to it.

Feeling pretty good about my stash, I decided to spring for a few more bags of candy this year. See last year, I ran out of candy toward the very end of the night and didn't get to share with any of the older kids who came out after sunset. So off to Walmart I went with a $1.50 off 3 bags coupon clipped from my Sunday paper. I scored 3 bags for $2.50 each, and minus the $1.50 coupon, my final total for this year is $15.56.

By doing some Internet research, I found the average amount of money spent on Halloween candy last year was just a little over $20. Totalling my candy expenditures, I've come in 25% under the national average. And overall I'm pretty proud of my display for this year!

Does anyone else out there have any tips or tricks for saving on Halloween candy?

Chocolate, Chewies, and Safe Trick-or Treating everyone!
Engineeringirl

4 comments:

Hilly said...

Yum yum!

Maureen said...

Yep but this is today only. There was one similar last week...

Walgreens:

Hershey’s, Mars or Nestle fun size candy 10.23-12.5 oz
Use the $1.50/1 coupon found on coupons.com – use zip 99218
Pay $0.99
Get back $0.50 Register Rewards
Final cost $0.49 per bag!

Lauren said...

Dang Maureen! you're on top of it girl!

jb said...

Dang! I wish I was that smart, I just spent 12 bucks on candy... and believe it or not, the candy aisle is a pretty crazy place on afternoon of Halloween