Thanksgiving on the Cheap

I love bargains.  I can't remember if I mentioned here that I'm a coupon nut, but it's probably not a stretch of the imagination since I've talked about being raised by grandparents that lived through the Great Depression and saved everything. We can't get crazy like some of those folks on that Extreme Couponing show here in the Midwest because there are no stores that triple coupons, but we can get some pretty good deals.  In fact, over on my Thriftypuppy blog, I used to outline all the deals every day.  It got to be WAYYYY too time consuming, though, and I quit when I realized that I was doing more coupon blogging than actual living.

Anyway, I don't want to turn this into a couponing blog but I've been doing alot of couponing lately and getting some great deals.  So I thought I would share it with you in hopes that you could save some money also. 

J. and I usually spend Thanksgiving at home together and sometimes we make the dinner with the turkey and trimmings and sometimes we're lazy and just hit the buffet.  The problem is that I love turkey pot pie and everything you can do with leftovers and the smell of roasting turkey wafting through the house.  So we're cooking this  year for the second year in a row.

This weekend, I picked up a 7 lb. ham and a 12 pound turkey, which is enough for the two of us, for just $13.00 after coupons.  No, that's not a typo.  Given that the ham retailed for over $23.00 and the turkey was $18.00, that's pretty darn good.  How did I do it?  Combining a sale with coupons.

Our local coupon-friendly Hy-vee has a sale right now where you get the turkey free if you buy the ham.  I had a $5 off $50 coupon for Hy-Vee so we're down to $18.00 for both at that point.  Then it gets creative.  They also had  sale on Kraft items where you buy 10 selected Kraft items (cheese, Velveeta, mayo, etc.) and you automatically get $6.00 off at the register.  Price Chopper has the same sale, but they are giving you $10 off.  Did you know Hy-Vee price matches?  Just take the ad in and ask them to price match.  But I still would have had to pay for the 10 Kraft items.  Luckily, they had Kraft shredded cheese on sale for just $1.00 and I had six $1.00 off 2 coupons.  So I bought 10 of them at just 50 cents each after coupon, or $5.00 total, and got the $10.00 off the turkey\ham.  That $5.00 "profit" brought the total down to just $13.00 for the stars of our Thanksgiving dinner.

Now you may not have a Hy-Vee or Price Chopper in your area, but price matching and coupons are usually OK at most stores.  Several stores are doing the "buy a ham, get a turkey" sale, including ShopRite and HEB.  Check your local stores to see if they are offering something similar.

Want to find out how to get 28 ABSOLUTELY FREE items or even make money at CVS today?  Check out Part I of my Couponing for Fun and Profit series!