This latest receipt wins the prize for being the longest receipt ever. It’s almost six feet long.
Mr. A has been stocking up again… he wants to be prepared in case anything goes wrong… this latest receipt is 196 cans of tuna in water on sale for forty-four cents a can. He went through the 15 Items Only register, because he had four closed cases. The cashier said that didn’t matter, he had to scan one can 196 times.
Someone needs to teach that cashier how to enter multiples of items.
When Mr. A does this, we refer to these as “Big Scares” and they always coincide with a great sale. This event will forever be referred to as the “Big Tuna Scare of 2010”.
Last year in June, we had “The Big Tomato Sauce Scare of 2009”. If I remember correctly, these were on sale 10 for $1.00. This used to be a run of the mill common sale two-three years ago, but nowadays we are lucky to find then on sale 5 for $1.00, so he took advantage and stocked up.
We’ve used about 3 cases since then. Here is what the stack looks like currently (14 cases):
In 2009 we also had “The Big Butter Scare” when he bought forty pounds of butter priced at 99 cents a pound, and also “The Big Cream Cheese Scare” when he bought twenty packages of cream cheese for $10.00. And last but not least, there was the “Big Chicken Scare” when the store had discounted whole chickens to 19 cents a pound because they ordered way too many. He brought home 36 chickens that time. I just used up the last one a month ago.
Do you stock up on items when they are on sale?
OMG!!! I can’t help but laugh- sorry Mr. A. I do LOVE what he’s doing though because I’d do the same thing if Mr. Money wouldn’t kill me. 🙂 We ended up with a case of peas once because they were on sale and we lived in a 600 square foot condo. That was interesting! 😉
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
March 6th, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Hey, Mr. A doesn’t care if you laugh at him. 🙂 We don’t really have a place to store all these canned goods, but we are using them up slowly but surely. I’ll tell him you got a chuckle. 🙂
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I don’t know what store this was at, but at least some stores do not allow this in their cash register systems as a matter of security – they want every single item scanned. Even at Sam’s, the clerks have told me they are required to move every item you have to a different cart – even when I only have a few items and everything is clearly visible.
I do stock up on items, but not at this level.
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
March 6th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Hi Sheila, well, I guess so. But this particular store has “case” price sales fairly regularly and has stacks of cases in the aisles. And I’ve seen them do multiples before, so it just seemed silly to me. And time consuming. I would have been embarrassed if I was the one in line with people behind me. In fact, I probably would have complained to the manager but Mr. A doesn’t let anyone ruffle him.
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Sorry – in my previous comment, I had included a quote which I was referring to, but it doesn’t display: ‘Someone needs to teach that cashier how to enter multiples of items.’
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I am currently having a ‘Eat the pantry and freezer’ month which limits my grocery shopping to ONLY meals that involve eating lots of stuff out of my pantry. I challenge you to do the same thing one of these months. It might pay off big time in your shopping budget to try to just eat things that you have stocked up on (obviously you’ll need to buy dairy, produce, etc. still.)
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Melissa, thank you for the suggestion. I would like to try a challenge like this sometime, and if it were only myself I would probably try it. I mentioned this challenge idea to my hubby, Mr. A, who is the main grocery shopper and he just can’t see how this would be a good idea. I told him how many personal finance bloggers like to keep a minimum of food on hand, like one week’s worth of food. But then I see posts like this one from Jim at Bargaineering whose town was snowed in where he said, “When we visited the [grocery store] Thursday before the storm, it was already very slim pickings. There was absolutely no meat left in the entire store except for a few smoked hams and some sausages… milk… fresh produce was all gone except for a few badly bruised apples, and most of the shelves were down to their last bits. You need to always keep your pantry as well-stocked as possible and we were fortunate to be that way accidentally.” (My emphasis on accidentally) Now granted, it’s not going to snow anytime soon where we live, but you never know what might happen. He believes we live in a time where it is best to be prepared in a self-sufficiency sort of way… and who am I to say he’s wrong? If it makes him feel more comfortable and a way to support our family, I have to say more power to him. I’m sure you are right, and we’d save a ton of money one month by doing this, but I don’t see it happening.
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That is hilarious!
SDXB used to do that sort of thing. He would buy bulk lots of almost ANYTHING, long as it was on sale. I used to call it “Klingon food,” because the fact was, no one would eat it.
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
LOL! Klingon food! Well, we do use tomato sauce frequently, making our own spaghetti sauce, salsa, pizza sauce, chili, Hunter’s Chicken and lots of other things. We also eat quite a bit of tuna, and Mr. A often brings a couple of cans of tuna for his lunch on the go so he doesn’t have to succumb to stopping for fast food. So I am pretty sure we can use these items. We used all the butter already, the cream cheese was gone ages ago, and like I said I just used up the last chicken for making stock. So we do a pretty good job.
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Ah, now if only Tim liked tuna!
We stock up all the time. We went through something like 3-4 months of not buying cereal. I had a bunch of coupons so the boxes were just barely over $1 each.
More recently, we made some poor customer service girl’s own private hell. I sent Tim to the store for $1 4-packs of Scott tissue. He was armed with 15 coupons 75 cents off 2. So they should have been $1.25/2. But apparently the company issued a retraction and stated the CORRECT price was $1.69. Tim had left his cell at home, so just bought them anyway. So we paid $1.32 EACH. For 18 of them.
Yesterday we marched back in with them and got a refund. Also returned two boxes of cereal that Tim had gotten. (The deal was for 4, he got 6.) The good news being that they then credited us the coupons — since I’m assuming they’d already been sent in — so a bill of $47 got a refund of $39.53. Which means two bags of candy and four boxes of cereal were around $8.
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
Heh… Mr. A went to Walmart with the ad match and the cashier was having such a hard time deciding if he should do the ad match that Mr. A told him don’t worry about it, then he went to Albertson’s to find that the ad had been retracted. But we did get four packs of ScotTissue. My favorite toilet paper, too. Great deal on that cereal and candy!
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We stock up by buying a few extra cans; nothing like that stack. One reason is we just don’t have the room and the second reason is that I’d be worried about using it before it goes bad.
What is the expiration date on those cans?
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
March 6th, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Bucksome, I probably wouldn’t buy that many cases either, but we do use a lot of tomato sauce. It helps my husband to feel more comfortable to stock up, and he’s been right a lot of times before in the years I’ve known him, so I have to trust him. BTW, the expiration date is March 11, 2011. There are 336 cans left, so that means we would need to use six cans a week to use it up before the expiration date. However, these cans are in the house where it is cool, and I am not one to be too worried about expiration dates. So… it will probably take us longer than a year to use them, but I’m sure it will be okay. We may even share them with family this year, who knows. Thanks for your input! 🙂
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I haven’t stocked up like that on anything in a long while but I would if I could get away with it! 🙂
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Mrs. Accountability Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Revanche: I’ll let my hubby know that you and Mrs. Money would back him up on his stocking up! 🙂 Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
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