Thursday, September 4, 2008

Safeway and Questions about giftcards & rebates

As I found previously when I asked questions to my readers, or make that reader, well, that about sums it up. It seems not a lot of folks read this, but, where do you count rebate dollars in your budgets? For example, a few weeks ago I bought items to do the Kelloggs deal. I haven't submitted the receipts/UPCs yet (I plan to next week) but which budget do I add the $10 to? The week I receive the money? The week I purchased the items? For CVS bucks it is easy because I get them right away and don't count them during the one shopping trip in my Out of Pocket, because I am still paying the out of pocket amount... however, when I do use them, I subtract them as I would coupons. Rite Aid I haven't had to worry about because I've been using giftcards for all of my purchases. Speaking of giftcards...

I've been trying to limit my giftcards when I buy my weekly grocery items. I know that in a few months if I used the Giant gift cards every week, my budget will look nothing like it does now. I try to alternate places I shop with giftcards and without (I do most of my grocery shopping at Safeway which is a place I have no giftcards for - Giant, we will shortly have $54 worth of giftcards - but I only bought some meat there last week). So what does everyone do? Do you space it out? Do you use them right away and roll over the budgeted money to another week? Do you consider gift card money as spent in your budget and count the money spent but then deduct the savings and put them somewhere (say in a high yield savings account)? What do you do?

We are expecting a pretty awful storm/hurricane this weekend, Hanna here in the northeast so I decided to go food shopping today in case I can't go out over the weekend. I went to Safeway which is starting to be my favorite store to shop (it helps it is right across the street).

What did I buy?

$2.50 Dark Chocolate Chex Mix (this is highly addictive but so good)
$.69 can of corn
$.69 can of peas
$4.99 bottle of extra virgin olive oil
$2.64 3 Powerade
$3.00 3 Gatorade
$2.50 tortilla chips (the boyfriend wanted them after he saw them sitting for the luncheon yesterday)
$2.50 Snyders pretzals
$2.25 3 Yoplait creamy lights
$3.00 YoPlus 4 pack
$2.50 Activia 4 pack
$5.49 Scrubbing Bubbles scrubber (will get full amount back in rebate)
$3.99 Scrubbing Bubbles cleaner
$2.50 Arnold 100% wheat bread
$.50 marked down turkey breast (sell by 9/4)
$.50 marked down turkey breast (sell by 9/4)

- $1/1 Powerade
- $1/1 Powerade
- $1/1 Powerade
- $1/1 Activia
- $1/1 YoPlus
- $.60/3 Yoplait
- $.75/1 Scrubbing bubbles
- $.60/1 Chex Mix

= $33.60 Oop

(Will be mailing in rebate to get $5.49 back)

Running tally for this week: $57.87/$59.22

1 comment:

Laura said...

call me weird, but i don't count the money until i have it in hand...mostly because i don't trust most rebates until i get money back.

chalk that up to being burned one too many times by MIRs on electronics.