I am a big fan of Cherry Coke, so whenever it is on sale it’s like a little taste of Christmas.

We went to King Soopers, where they are selling 12-packs of Coke Products at 4 for $11.  This is already a pretty good deal considering it is $2.75 per 12 pack, or $0.22 a can. That’s cheaper than the off-brand soda in the machines at Wal Mart!

But, this wouldn’t be a “How We Save” post until we saved more money on top of this great sale.  On each box of Coke Products right now, The Coca Cola Company is putting $1 off 2 12-packs of Coke Products.

Since we bought 4 12-packs we were able to use two of those coupons.

So we got 4 12-packs for $9.00!  That is $0.18 a can!

An aside which is not how I am saving money so much as making it, but it has something to do with the deal above:  A co-worker and I have been selling sodas for $0.50 a piece at work in the office fridge.  We put the sodas on the shelf with a cup and ask people to pay “on their honor”.  Normally, we make between $0.11 – $0.18 (avg. $0.14) a can.  With the deal above, our profit goes from 29% to 64%! That is a great markup and means that my co-worker and I can actually pay for another 12-pack out of our profits after selling only 9 cans.  This deal may actually help us break even on our little venture.

We went to King Soopers tonight and bought groceries:

Our total: $197.33

Store discounts: $26.84

Coupons: $9.30

Multiplied Coupons: $4.10 (doubled up to a dollar)

Grand Total: $157.09

We saved 20% on our bill!!!

Now for the fun part. We guessed at how many meals we were planning on getting out of this trip to the grocery store: (a meal may be breakfast, lunch or dinner. All numbers are guesses based on past experience)

Macaroni grill + chicken: 6 meals

Chili: 8 meals

Spaghetti in the crock pot: 6 meals

Sausage and O’Brien potatoes: 4 meals

Red Beans and Rice: 4 meals

Bagels + cream Cheese (1 for breakfast): 10 meals

Box of cereal: 7 meals

Total: 45 meals

Cost per meal: $3.49

This price per meal also includes all of the cleaning supplies that we got, and the $14.00 we spent on cat food (which we pay our grocery envelope back from our pet envelope, see envelope system). Without the cat food, the cost per meal goes to: $3.17 per meal.

I will try to update these numbers as we make the meals, to tell you how many actual servings we got out of each one. This way, you can have the true numbers as they come out.

We made all the meals we mentioned and were only off by 4 meals total, mostly because we just ate too much when we made it…Oops.  Either way, that means that we got away with $3.83 per meal that week.