I've never really gone out of my way to take advantage of rebates unless they're right in my face. But as part of my 2006 challenge, I decided to try and take advantage of more rebates, particularly on items I'd be buying anyway, to add to my savings. I checked out the Freebies/Rebates forum on this site (man, does that Kimmie do a good job!), and lucked out with a $10 Del Monte rebate for buying 20 products. It just so happened that during last week's "can can" sale at our grocery store, I bought everything I needed, and still had my receipt. I spent a total of $10.94 for 20 cans of fruit, vegetables, and broth, and will get $10 back. Cool. That inspired me to do the $10 Colgate rebate that's out there. I wasn't going to bother, because I did it last year and must not have sent everything in, because they rejected my request. But last week, I bought 3 of the items I needed to complete the rebate, so it was just a matter of buying 2 tubes of toothpaste ($1.97-$1 coupon each). So for $1.94, I'll be getting back $10 there, too. Thinking I was on a roll, I took advantage of a Unilever rebate. The form I cut out was from a CVS ad, but Eckerd advertised the same rebates. So I went there with my coupons and bought a bunch of stuff. Turned out 1) The form was exclusive to CVS, so I need to make a special trip back to Eckerd to get their form for the stuff; 2) I bought soap and body wash, when the rebate was for soap or body wash; 3) I bought 1 thing of fabric softener instead of 2; and 4) I planned it to get an extra $4 back by buying a certain number of items, but because I messed up #2 and #3, I now have to fix it. Lesson learned: READ THE FINE PRINT and don't buy stuff just for the rebate! I may just go return the whole kit and kaboodle!

The rest of the day was pretty productive. Went to CVS for DD's vitamins and a few other items that will be reimbursed by my FSA. (What a good deal I got on Ibuprofen: 100 Nuprin caplets on sale for $2.15, minus a $2 CVS coupon for a grand total of $.15!). Then I went to Eckerd for that whole rebate mess, spent $33 on groceries, got DS a much needed haircut ($14) and came home.

Total groceries this month: $273/$500.