SmartShopper

When luck and strategy = a great deal

Here's a coupon story from one of our long-time Smart Shopper blog readers and contributors who scored a super deal this week because she forgot her coupon at home!

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Good Deal

Here's a coupon story from one of our long-time Smart Shopper blog readers and contributors who scored a super deal this week because she forgot her coupon at home!

My thanks to VLynn (that's her Smart Shopper blog username) for sending me the following story about her experience this week:

Here's a coupon story that might help the coupon newbies as well as the old timer's see that using coupons is more than handing them to the the cashier. Strategy and luck often come into play.

I was in Target yesterday looking at the Easter clearance when I saw that the candy was 50% off. The M&Ms were originally $3.50, so they would be $1.75.  I thought I had a $0.75 off coupon for them, so I got excited.  Even though Target doesn't double coupons, paying only $1 for a bag of M&M's seemed like a good deal.

At this point, I realized that I had left my coupon bag at home! Oh, the horror! Usually, I bring both sets of coupons with me to the store, the ones I plan to use and my big coupon bag that contains all the rest of my coupons.  However, that day I was in a hurry, so I only had the coupons that I had planned to use that day.

Since, I had not planned to buy M&M's, the coupons for them were at home! Well, I just couldn't bring myself to pay $1.75 for that bag of M&M's when I knew I could get it cheaper with my coupon, so I passed up the deal. I told myself that I would be going back to Target by the weekend and I would make sure to have the M&M coupons with me.

Today, I was planning a trip to HT. Of course, I checked your HT list to see if there were any special deals that I might want.  Well, guess what I saw?  M&M's were on sale BOGO at HT. Of course, BOGO means Buy One Get One free. However, at HT you don't have to buy 2 items to get the deal. You can buy one BOGO item at 50% off instead of having to buy both of them to get the BOGO deal. The price would be $1.77 per bag. However, at HT, my $0.75 off coupon would double to $1.50 and I would only pay $0.27 for the bag! Whoohoo!! So, since I had 3 of the coupons, I could get 3 bags of M&M's for less than the price of what I would have paid for 1 bag at Target.

Of course, I did a happy dance when I realized that serendipity and forgetfulness had saved me from missing out on a major coupon deal!

Thanks again for sharing your story, VLynn!

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

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