Kroger Cartbuster

In addition to the regular savings, Kroger will also be featuring a “Deal of the Day” beginning August 3 and running through August 16. You can visit www.cartbuster.com starting on the 3rd to download exclusive deals to your shopper card. (*Please be sure to check your local Kroger Co. Family of Stores for participating dates and deals. The Deal of the Day promotion is not valid at: Fred Meyer or Food 4 Less.) You can also visit the Kroger Facebook and Kroger Twitter pages.

Do you know who else is included in the Kroger Family of Stores? Even if you don’t have a Kroger in your area, you may have one of these: Ralphs, King Scoopers, City Market, Dillons, Smith’s, Fry’s, QFC, Baker’s, Owen’s, Jay C Food Stores, Hilander, Gerbes, Food4Less, Fred Meyer, Pay Less Supermarkets and Scott’s food & Pharmacy.

In celebration of the Kroger Cart Buster Savings Event, I’ve been given an opportunity to give away a $25 Kroger gift card (good at any of the stores listed above) to one of my readers. I’ve already used the one that they sent me! I stocked up on Weight Watchers Smart Ones and Yoplait yogurts to have for lunch for the next couple of weeks. Since I work from home, they are a perfect way for me to eat healthy and quickly while sticking to my budget.

To enter:

1) Leave a comment below telling how you would use the $25 Kroger Gift Card (one entry).

2) Post on Twitter about the contest and leave a comment below with your Tweet (one entry).

3) Sign up for our newsletter at the top of the page and leave a comment below (e-mail will be verified) (one entry).

4) Blog about this contest or post the contest in your giveaway section and leave your link to the post below (two entries).

Drawing will take place August 16, 2011, at noon Eastern. Must be a US Resident, age 18 or older to enter. Winner will be notified via e-mail and have 24 hours to respond or a new winner will be selected.

Disclosure: The Kroger gift card, information, and giveaway have been provided by Kroger and General Mills through MyBlogSpark.

I’ve never been one to clip coupons, which is odd because I won’t shop online without a coupon. But it always seemed to me that sorting through coupons to find brands that I like and then save a quarter was a lot of work. My family of 4 would often spend $180 or more at the grocery each week between name brand items and all of the special stuff I would buy to help stay in my Weight Watchers points. But as the economy got worse and expenses got higher, I decided that one of the places I could cut back easily was at the grocery.

Over the last year, I started shopping almost exclusively at Kroger and using my Kroger Plus card. I started paying more attention to their sales and swapping out some of my name brand items for their store brands.

I am happy to say that last week my bill was only $88!! It was a combination of the coupon that they had in the paper, the Kroger Plus deals, and swapping out brands. That would be a savings of over $5000 for my family over a year!

One of the things that is really helping is that by using my Kroger Plus card, they know what I buy and can send me targeted coupons. Today I received coupons in the mail for apple juice, pudding, cheese, Edy’s ice cream, Oscar Mayer wieners, and Oscar Mayer deli meat. Not only are these the products that I like, but the EXACT brands that I buy. $6.50 in coupons for things that I would be buying for sure in the next two weeks anyway. There’s also a notice of their 10 Item Mega Event coming up, and I always stock up on name brands when I have that.

So the moral of the story is that even us “non-coupon-clipping” girls can save a lot of money at Kroger just by being smart and making the most of our Kroger Plus cards.