The results are in! The challenge I took on several weeks ago was to see how far could I make a $100 gift card go at Vons, using sales, store coupons, paper coupons and Ecoupons. I am very proud of how much in free groceries I got by just being a smart shopper.

I won the contest — sponsored by Ecoupon company Cellfire.com — through my pal Traci’s great blog Southern Couponbelle. When she laid down the challenge to see how much in free groceries I could net, I knew I was up for the task!

Now, of course, I had some help, and that is the great Vons deals list compiled weekly by my pal Jess at her great blog, This Frugal Life. She details every item that is the best price this week at the store, and tells you which coupons to match up, until you are absolutely sure you are getting the best advertised — and sometimes unadvertised — deals.

Want to see how much I saved? Watch this short 1.50 minute video, and you will get the final — and I what I consider — darn good final amount of groceries I bought for only $100. Thanks again to Southern Couponbelle and This Frugal Life for all your help — be sure and “like” them on Facebook!

It’s not often one walks out of the grocery store smiling, but I did this week, when I left Vons with the 28 items pictured — $102 in merchandise — for $6.91! That’s 96 percent off! But what’s great to know, is it is so simple nowadays — with Ecoupons, Internet printable coupons and blogs that tell you each week the best deals! You can score big, too!

This post also chonicles how well I am doing with the $100 Vons gift card I won from Southern Couponbelle, and I am happy to report that in three weeks, I’ve purchased $312 in groceries, but paid only $47 — that’s 85 percent off! And I still have $53 left on the gift card I won!

It’s really quite simple to net big savings at the grocery stores:

Finally, those nice bloggers out who chart the deals at your grocery store — and save you so much time — are paid a small amount every time you redeem Ecoupons, so be sure and load yours through the web site that explains the best deals to you each week. It’s a nice way to say, “thank you” for all their efforts.

So I am up to $312 in products on my gift card, I can’t wait to see how much further I can make it go!

Thanks to the Southern CouponBelle blog, I won a $100 gift card to Vons, sponsored by the Ecoupon company, Cellfire.com. But I was given a challenge: How far can I make that gift card go, using store specials, paper coupons and Ecoupons?  Let me tell, I am off to a great start! I just walked out this evening with $50 in groceries for only $10! That’s 80 percent off!

I have become a great believer in Ecoupons. The reason is not only because of their simplicity (you just load then to your club card), but you may also combine with paper coupons. The best part is you can stockpile Ecoupons, where multiple ones are deducted! This doesn’t net you savings — this is when you are paid to buy items!

For instance:

You see how great Ecoupons combine to make incredible deals?!

By the way, I also got the Gold n Soft margarine and Land o Lakes spreadable butter for free, too! Just used store and/or manufacturer coupons for those.

Of course, I didn’t figure these deals out all by myself. I used the great Vons list provided each week at This Frugal Life. She is the best for Vons coupon matchups and makes it so easy each week. My savings in coupons, alone, was $24! That means if I had not used coupons, I would have paid $34 for what I ended up paying $10.

Thanks to Southern Couponbelle for teaching me the joys of Ecoupons, and now thanks to the gift card I won, I’ve begun to see how far I can stretch a C note. I think I am off to a good start — $50 in groceries and only used $10 of my gift card.

Let the tally begin!

For the best produce prices, there is one place to shop — and that’s stores aimed at the Hispanic market. Want proof? On Friday, I ran into my produce guy from Vons at Vallarta! We laughed, but he was aiming right to the produce area, too! What does that tell you?

You see all the produce (and rice and beans) pictured here? Total cost $11.60! Subtract out the rice and beans, and the total cost is $8.22 for easily two weeks produce!

Here is just a sample of the prices:

• 10 pounds potatoes (99 cents)
• 1 pound Strawberries (99 cents)
• 1 green onion (33 cents)
• 1 cilantro (18 cents!)
• 1.75 pounds of peaches - 86 cents (50 cents a pound!)
• 5 pounds Valencia oranges - $1.65 (33 cents a pound!)
• 2.5 pounds of white onion - 80 cents (33 cents a pound!)
• 1.51 pounds of broccoli *crowns* - $1.49 (99 cents a pound)
• Celery - 50 cents!
• 5.14 pounds rice — $1.71 (39 cents a pound!)
• 4.25 pounds of pinto beans - $1.67 (39 cents a pound!)

Compare those prices to what you normally pay! I would say on average they are more than 50 percent off. Don’t worry. Most produce is grown in the United States.

There is a little culture shock. At Vallarta — a wonderfully clean, large store — I stick out as a 6-foot-4 balding Anglo man, but you know what? I see a lot of seniors from the nearby mobile home parks there, too. Also, most announcements are in Spanish, and you will learn the Hispanic Top 40 music selections.

But for 50 percent off plus, I will adapt!

A warning — the prices for other grocery products are notoriously high at Hispanic markets. So I draw up a list of the produce deals, or any other items that may be loss leaders, and do my wham-bam shopping. Literally, I am in and out in 15 minutes or less! Most times, I don’t even get a cart, and just load items in my reuseable grocery totes.

Do a test run this week and see how much you can save. If it’s good enough for my Vons produce guy, the savings is good enough for me! 

I was doing my grocery list for this week, and realized I don’t think like most people when doing the same task — I don’t ask myself, “What do I need?” I ask, “Is this the lowest price?” Of course, I only buy what I will use (or can donate), but I don’t look at immediate needs, I look at price and stock up.

This coming week is Fourth of July, so every condiment is on super-duper special. But, by combining with coupons, I am going to stock up on free mustard, BBQ sauce, and 99 cent Best Foods mayo and Heintz ketchup. I don’t need any of these right now, but in three months when other people are paying $3.99 for mayo, $1.50 for mustard, $1.99 for BBQ sauce and $2 for ketchup, I will have paid $1.99 for the same $9.50 in products that they waited to buy until they ran out.

This is using grocery store marketing to your benefit. The stores this week are luring people in with great deals on all the extras they may need for barbecues, but the meat is not that great of a price. They know you will buy the meat, but they are using the condiments as the loss leader.

But you can be smart, skip the meat (’cause you have enough in your freezer, if you’ve been following the 12-week cycle), and just hit the loss leaders now.

I can guarantee you, you will not see such good prices on the condiments until Labor Day in September. In the winter, these deals will be non-existent.

So, the lesson today is don’t think of this week what you need; instead, buy now when you know it’s the lowest price.

Another great Catalina deal at Vons this week! Buy four Ziploc containers for $1.99 when you buy four, then get back $4 off in a Catalina off your next order. But it gets better!

Add in the $1.50 off 2 from the May 16 Smart Source coupon flyer and and the 55 cents off 1, and you end up paying only 49 cents each for all sets of containers!

Here’s a scenario (and what I did tonight): Purchase the containers in one transaction. Then, using the $4 off Catalinas on the remainder of your order. I walked out with the remaining 13 items for $1.41 — 96 percent off!

I am really becoming enamored with these Catalina deals. Thanks to This Frugal Life for the tipoff on this great deal! Fan her on Facebook.

I know it’s going to be a good week at the grocery store when I get excited as I cut out my coupons, and tonight was one of those — I am going to get paid to buy cereal at Vons!

Beginning Wednesday, May 12, Vons has a special when if you buy four boxes of certain kinds of cereal, you get an automatic $4 off. This brings the price down for Corn Flakes (12 oz.) and Froot Loops (12.2 oz.) to $1 a box. But it gets better!

Print out two of these coupons for $1 off two Kelloggs cereals, and you will pay 50 cents a box to buy four boxes of cereal! You can find the links here or here or here. (And remember you can usually print the coupon twice.)

But it gets even better!

Purchase those same boxes of cereal through Friday, May 16, and you will get a Catalina back with your receipt for $3 off your next order at the grocery store! Now you will get paid $1 to buy the cereal!

Here is your one caveat: If you plan on buying eight+ boxes, be sure and ring them up under different transactions. You can just separate the order and tell the cashier you wish to do two transactions. Otherwise, you will only get $4 back in Catalinas no matter how many you buy.

Now if you think that’s a lot of cereal, please know it normally has a shelf life of up to a year, and the next time we will see cereal deals will be in September for “back to school.” It’s time to stock up again — this is working the 12 week cycle, like I did last week with the juice.

Gotta love getting paid to buy cereal! I will report back later on how I do this week — not a lot of great deals, but London Broil is at its lowest again at $1.77 (just after I ran out this week) and fresh chickens at 77 cents a pound. Working that 12-week cycle works!

I surpassed my personal best at the grocery store tonight — 86 percent off and 33 items. $101 turned into $15! But I was kind of surprised by an email comment I received, “We would never drink all that juice.” Then I realized that people don’t know we’re not going to consume this in one week — I am buying low and eating low.

With a store special and Internet coupons, I got 10 juices for 99 cents apiece. Figuring one per week, we should run out just about the time another incredible sale rolls along — this is called using the 12-week cycle rule. Every product will hits its lowest price every 3 months. This week was the time to stock up.

You buy when items are at their lowest and then you don’t buy them for weeks — or even months. If they are free — or you are paid to buy them — you put it in your cart. Use it or donate it! Spread your good fortune around.

Betty Crocker had a great special — Buy 2, Get 3 Free — match with Ecoupons and manufacturer coupons, and I got paid $2.52 to buy everything! The Honey Nut Cherrios were $1.49, but minus two Ecoupons and one manufacturer coupon, and I got paid 61 cents to buy it. The Warm Delights are my Mother’s favorite — one kind was $1.99. I added an Ecoupon and manufacturer coupon, and got paid 1 cent to put it in the cart.

Don’t think I figured this all out on my own … I used one of the blogs from the Grocery Gathering blog group. In this case, This Frugal Life. I added in the body wash deal when I read it on another blog — got two for 49 cents, or 24 cents each. Oh and I scored on the Oscar Mayer lunchmeat — used a Vons in-ad coupon for $2.49, and then had two $2 off coupons from Facebook when I “liked” them — 49 cents each!

Let me tell you, when you score deals like this, you like going to the grocery store! So think ahead now to save a lot of money now and in the future.

Oh man, the specials are so good this week at Vons/Safeway! I scored so great that I should have had a cigarette after! I got $109 in groceries for what will end up being $17.70 — 84 percent off!

Of course, what worked best was combining specials — combining grocery in-ad coupons, with manufacturer ones, combining manufacturer coupons with Ecoupons, combining specials with a rebate offer, and sometimes combining grocery store specials, Catalinas and coupons — to the point in several instances I got the product free or was paid to buy it!  

My main strategy in planning this shop was to use the Grocery Gathering blog, and the nice folks who volunteer to match up specials with coupons each week. By cross-referencing the three people who did Vons, I netted every deal that was possible.

These included:

But it gets better! I got paid to buy the following items:

I also bought one Jennie-O ground turkey breast and got the second one free on special. Going to mail in for a $5 rebate that I mentioned in this post, so I will end up paying $1 for each (The BOGO was only on the turkey breast, which was $6.99)! Oh and I worked the “buy 5, get $5″ Kraft deal and got sour cream (65 cents), two cheese snacks (49 cents each) and two cheese slices ($1.99 each), and paid a whopping $5.63 for $13.58 in merchandise.

The other great deal was 32 ounces of cheese that I got for $4.99 — and used a coupon of course.

Yes, folks, this is what $17.70 in groceries looks like!

The time has come to work the Jennie-O turkey rebate deal I mentioned in this post!

I knew if I held out long enough, a “buy one, get one free” deal would come along, and patience paid off, because Vons/Safeway has a BOGO running through Tuesday on the ground turkey. This is normally priced at $4.99, so buy one, and get one free, or $2.50 each.

Then submit for the Jennie-O rebate for up to a $5 refund on any Jennie-O purchase. Your receipt will read that you paid $4.99 for one, and the other was free = $4.99 purchase. Submit it and follow the simple directions, and you will net $10 in ground turkey for free!

Now this is smart shopping!

The rebate is for the first 25,000 submitted, but I just Googled and am not seeing any sites reporting that the rebate funds have run out. In fact, Jennie-O still has the submission form up on its web site. See it here to print yours.

Ground turkey is a great meat substitute, especially when used in conjunction with recipes that involve a lot of flavor, like this one for black bean chili, or even Hamburger Helper.

But let’s face it, free makes it even more tasty!