Frugal Living - Store Loyalty Cards

First you're looking at the gas price and wondering where the heck I got that picture.  I took it today. Then you're wondering what the gas price has to do with store loyalty cards.

I live in a rural area and our choice of grocery stores is fairly limited.  We don't have any grocery stores that offer unlimited double coupons, so we have to plan grocery trips.  The store I frequent has one day a week that they offer double coupons and they are limited to five.  Every so often there are extra days where coupons are doubled and the amount is increased to ten.  Well, I thought today was one of those days so I carefully planned my list combining coupons with the sale flyer.  I was wrong.  It was a double day, but it was still limited to five. :(

However, I did have some great savings; even a couple of free items.  Using the loyalty card at the store may seem like a hassle, or if you're like most people, you already have a ton of those cards to keep track of.  It is worth having though.

I used my store card to get sales that were only available with the card, combined store coupons with manufacturer coupons (five were doubled) and saved $57 on a $162 bill.  It's not as good as the people that save 90% on their bill, but I was pretty happy saving 33%.

Additionally, this store had a promotion going where if you bought certain products you got a scratch off card.  Some of the cards were worth cash.  I didn't purchase items specially to get the cards, only if they were the best deal.  Today I redeemed my cards for $6 cash.

Now the gas comes in.  This grocery store offers an additional reward in gas points.  For every $50 you spend, you get 5 cents a gallon off on gas at participating station.  I've been saving up my rewards and today I hit 35 cents per gallon.  I purposely put off getting gas until after I had gone grocery shopping since I knew I would have more rewards.

So when I got to the gas station, my gas was $2.99 a gallon.  My loyalty card saved me $5.63 on my tank of gas.

The total savings for my day...  Almost $69.  Now you can see how a loyalty card can pay off.  The best part of all this was my 10 year old daughter observing this.  She loves to look at our receipt and see the savings.