Well, CVS was a bust today. The 30% coupon I had was only good on non-sale items, and the only other coupons I had to stack with were for items already on sale. Even with 30% off of these items, I wasn't finding the deals I wanted to find. I realized that the budget I was given is going to be difficult for some items, especially once tax is factored in, but I still feel confident I can do this.
To break it down a little easier so that I was able to determine if it was a good deal or not, I calculated the unit budget for items. For example: 104 rolls of toilet paper at a $36.00 budget meant I could spend approximately $0.35 per roll. Then you run into the issue of double rolls and mega (quad) rolls. The cost of toilet paper is insanely expensive if you don't have a goal in mind. If you buy toilet paper just to buy toilet paper, you may risk paying over a dollar a roll, which is ridiculous.
So after not having much luck on prices at CVS, we went to Big Lots. I ended up purchasing the toilet paper and facial tissue while I was there because the deals were just too good to pass up. I bought 3 packs of 9 megarolls (9 megarolls = 36 regular rolls) at $9.00 per pack (3 packs of 9 megarolls = 108 regular rolls). This was a total of $27 pre-tax. That comes out to $1 per megaroll, or the equivalent of $0.25 per regular roll. These rolls are HUGE. They are by far the fattest rolls of toilet paper I have ever seen. I'm enough of a nerd that I checked the number of sheets per megaroll to other packs of regular and double rolls, and this was definitely the best deal. My only concern is that the budgeted amount was based on 2 regular rolls per week, so this basically means that 1 megaroll should ideally last for 2 weeks. This is for the bathroom on the main level of the house, not the bathrooms in their individual rooms. Hopefully, it will last as it's intended. At the end of the summer once everything else has been purchased, if there is any money left, we'll re-evaluate if more TP should be purchased.
I also bought Puffs facial tissue - not Kleenex brand. This is another product that if you aren't careful, you will spend an arm and a leg for. The budgeted amount for "Kleenex" was $9, at 1 box per month for 12 months, or $0.75 per box. At CVS, Publix, whereever, tissue is easily $3+ per box, unless you got the generic cheap crap, which I'm trying to avoid if I can (though, inevitably, some items will end up being generics when all is said and done). I knew this was going to be difficult to beat. At Big Lots, there were some value packs of multiple boxes packaged together. The best deal I found was Puffs brand, large family size boxes. There were 8 family size boxes that claimed to be the equivalent of 14 regular boxes, which was more than the 12 requested. I argued with myself for a while if this was an appropriate buy, and I finally decided yes. The cost was exactly $9 prior to tax, but I wasn't worried since I came under budget on the TP, the tax wouldn't be an issue when I went to pay.
So, the total budget for the two items I purchased today was $45 (remember, estimated regular retail was $90), and after tax, the total bill was $38.52...so I was under budget by $6.48. I'm looking forward to collecting coupons and searching deals for the rest of the products, and will keep you all posted.
Hope you're all having a good weekend!
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