I love cold cereal. I could seriously eat it for any meal.
Back when we lived in town, I would combine coupons and sales to get cereal for great prices. Now that we live in the boonies, I don’t use coupons anymore. Shopping at a discount grocery store is the way I get cereal cheap.
I go into Grocery Outlet several times a month and look through the cereal aisle every time. When I find a normal size box of cereal (~18 oz) for right around $1, I stock up. If we are out of cereal and they have cereal for less than $2, I will buy a couple of boxes.
We have other options for quick, kid-friendly breakfasts, like homemade oatmeal packets, so we don’t have to eat cereal everyday. We can save it for a special Sunday treat or just eat it sparingly.
Frugal Feat
Last week Grocery Outlet had a special 20% off sale on all of their cereal. Among the good deals, I grabbed some bags of Malt-o-Meal frosted mini spooners for $2.99 ($2.39 after the discount).
I got a couple bags near the store entrance. Then after thinking about the good deal it was, I grabbed a couple more from an end cap. As we unloaded the groceries at home, my daughter noticed the packaging was different on the bags. While both bags were the same price, one was 36 oz and one was 40 oz!
We had to be in town another day during the week, so I swung by the store for more bags, being sure to grab the 40 oz bags. We’re set on cereal for a while, as long as no one gets tired of mini wheats.
Frugal Flop
While I was at the store, I also found Vanilla Pepita Go Lean Clusters cereal in the health food section for $.47 (or $.38 after the discount).
Personally, it looks a little too healthy/weird for me, which was why I figured it ended up at Grocery Outlet (there are lots of weird flavors and foods at Grocery Outlet because they turned out to be a flop).
I thought my kids would not be interested in it, so I just got a couple of boxes for my husband to try.
Honestly, when I saw the cheap price, especially after the discount, I was tempted to buy all the boxes they had. I stopped myself by thinking that I would have to write about it as a frugal flop when I buy 40 boxes of cereal and my family hates it, so we end up feeding it the the chickens.
But now, it’s a flop for the opposite reason!
I gave some to my husband (easily the healthiest, best eater in our family) and he said it was fine. He said shredded wheat gets old, so it’s nice to have something more interesting.
After hearing my disclaimer and my my husband’s approval, all the kids wanted to try it too. I guess prefacing it with “you probably won’t like this” made my kids want to prove me wrong.
Now this flop that I thought I had prevented, turned into a flop because I didn’t stock up!
You win some. You lose some!
Frugal Funny
While we’re on the subject of cereal (and since I can’t think of anything particularly funny regarding frugality during the past week), I’m going to throw it back to 2007-ish. I learned about couponing in the extreme-ish way.
My sister told me all about a deal on cereal where you could buy ten boxes that were on sale, use coupons on them, then the coupon machine at the register would print off another crazy awesome coupon for your next cereal purchase. I can’t remember all the numbers now, nearly ten years later, but I do remember that it was a super fantastic deal.
It was such a good deal that we stocked up in a major way. We lived in a tiny basement (we must have a thing for basements), so our storage space for cases of cereal was limited.
Don’t worry though, cereal was a priority so we made space. We had our bed raised up on cinder blocks so we could fit cases of cereal (and other storage) underneath. We also stacked about 4 cases up beside our bed, covered it with a table cloth and called it a nightstand.
It was pretty great, because we didn’t have a nightstand to go with our super tall bed.
When we moved across the country for law school several months later, you better believe we brought our cereal stash with us! It came in handy when we were unloading the ABF truck that moved our stuff. We handed out boxes of cereal to all of the neighborhood kids after they helped us unload the truck!
It’s your turn!
- What were your frugal successes and failures?
- Any funny frugal moments?
I used to not be much of a cereal person, but it is definitely growing on me. I still only buy it when it is steeply discounted, never more than $2/box (unless it is unusually large). Lucky find on the Kashi. That is one of my favorites 🙂
We’re not big cereal people in our household. I don’t like any cereal. Seriously, I’ve tried just about every brand out there and they all taste terrible to me. My frugal flop for this week was our cucumbers. My Fiance is picky and only eats the cucumbers without the seeds. Since he started complaining that I wasn’t buying any healthy snacks, I bought some for him. Low and behold they sat in the fridge the entire week, and when he finally remembered they were there, THEY WERE MOLDY!
I wasted money on buying those “special” cucumbers, just to throw them out without ever opening the packaging. I guess I could have reminded him they were in there, but note to self, make sure he will eat them next time!
Oh we love cereal too. I could also eat it 3-4xday. I love the Malt-O-meal large bags also. Cereal prices are outrageous and you get about 3-4 servings from the smallest box for about $3-4. We shop Aldi’s so we can afford what they offer. Thank goodness milk is still cheap. I think I will have a bowl before bed.