Pasta, anyone?

How many of you have a monthly budget? Do you set aside money for groceries and the like? A few years ago, we set up a budget and included a set amount for groceries. Now, me being the hungry guy that I typically am, I rebelled initally. After all, why would I want to keep up with how much I was spending on food? When I'm hungry, I want to eat, and I don't care how much it costs. However, setting up a budget has been a great thing for us in many different ways.

Since we have this budget, that means we need to be cautious about how much we pay for food. So when we can find deals, and then use coupons to make them even better deals, we jump at the opportunity. The last two weeks presented us with such a deal, and led to the great savings as is indicated on this recent receipt.

Yes, my friends. We spent $1.09, and we saved 80 freaking percent! Isn't that great?

But perhaps I should let you in on what we spent that $1.09 on. We were at the store, and Carrie had cut out a coupon for a one-pound box of pasta. Actually, it was for 2 boxes, and we would save $1. Since the boxes were on sale for $1 each, we figured a coupon that was essentially buy one get one free was pretty good. So we bought two, and paid $1 for the two.

However, after checking out, the checking station began spitting out extra coupons, as they do sometimes. Looking over these, we saw a coupon that was, buy 3, get $2 off. Being the geniuses that we are, we figured that getting three for $1 was an even better deal. So we put our groceries in the car and turned around and went back into the store.

This time, we checked out, and turned in our coupon. Sure enough, the $2 off coupon worked, and so we got our 3 boxes of pasta for $1.09. (Now, you may be thinking that my math is way off right now. After all, that would only be a 66% percent savings, with 3 for the price of 1. However, $1 each was the sale price, so the receipt above takes the original MSRP into account when computing savings. Hence, 80%, baby!) But imagine our surprise when the register printed out another coupon, buy 3, get $2 off. So it was time to jump into the car and head off to the other store by the same name in town.

Yes, we went in, and once again got our great deal, and got yet another coupon. So, for the full week in which the pasta boxes were on sale, we kept getting this fabulous deal. How many did we finally get, you ask? I'm glad you did. Take a look at this picture and tell me if I went a little overboard in purchasing pasta.

I don't expect you to count all those boxes. In the end, we had 66 boxes of pasta. Yes, there are about 8 that didn't come from that specific sale, but we did get those boxes with coupons while they were on sale, too. What you see in this picture are 63 of the 66 boxes, since we had already made three boxes to eat before this.

Yes, seeing all that food really makes me hungry. It's a great deal, too, since I eat a lot of pasta with all my running. And, since pasta doesn't really go bad, I think it's safe to say that we are stocked up for a while.

MMM, pasta. What's interesting about these boxes is that they are mini versions of the pasta that we have usually bought. So, instead of the penne being about 2 inches long, they are closer to 3/4 inch long. But big or small, when you get a great deal on food that you like, sometimes you just can't help but stock up!