Shel's Savings Saga

So, made a big shopping trip today after work - Victoria's Secret, CVS, Target, and Walgreens.  Was supposed to go to Rainbow for Double coupon day, but since I worked an hour and a half late, I just wanted to get home.

We went to Target Sunday night - but due to the screw up at Target - I still can't figure out how it ended up - I have 3 receipts for the one transaction and it was a mess that took about 20 minutes to try and fix since I paid with 3 forms of payment (2 Target  $5 gift card, AMEX $10 gift card, and Target credit card).  Multiple forms of payment make refunds and adjustments very difficult there!  In the end I was charged $20 on my Target card, but they gave me $4 cash and credited $10 back onto the AMEX GC...  so my OOP should have been just $6 for the $50 worth of stuff (8 six packs of Mountain Dew bottles and TGI Fridays Entrees.  The TGIFs were on sale for $1.99 and B3G1 - and I had Target $1 Qs and manu $1 Qs which I ended up paying $0.99 for all 4).

So, Victoria's Secret - bought $45 perfume on sale for $25 used a $10 reward card and received a secret reward (guaranteed to be $10 but could be as much as $500 - last year I got a $50 one!) - was about $16 OOP.

CVS - Bought $47.42 worth of items for $17.60 OOP and received a $10 AMEX GC

Target - Bought $32.35 worth of items for $8.24 OOP and received a $5 Target GC

Walgreens - Devon was out of his favorite juice, so not much savings (usually I wait for a better sale and pay under $2 a bottle but $2 is okay) - $26.94 would have been regular price for 6 bottles of juice - $12 OOP

Overall - $53.84 OOP for $151.71 = savings of 65% + at least $25 in GC... which brings it to 81% savings.

Not too shabby!  Now let's just hope one of my Secret Rewards is worth more than $10 (got one yesterday, too, while shopping the last day of the buy 1 bra get 1 50% off).