Thursday, July 22, 2010

Sticky Situation

I stopped in at Staples earlier this week to take advantage of the penny glue bottles.  Although my husband preferred glue sticks, we decided that penny glue bottles were too good of a deal to pass up.  We will still be on the look-out for a good deal on glue sticks, but the glue bottles will help supplement the art projects.  As part of this deal, I needed to spend another $5.  Normally, I plan out my shopping lists to a “T” and even have back-up plans.  However, this trip was more spontaneous, so I went in with no game plan.

I verified that the teacher limit for the glue bottles was in fact 25, so I headed to count out the bottles.  I was so excited, but a little nervous as I didn’t have a plan for the additional $5 and I had my preschooler in tote, so there was no telling how much time I had before he would have a break down.  Together we quickly counted out 25 glue bottles.  Then, I quickly grabbed the ad to look for the best deals.  I noticed that copy paper was on-sale with a rebate for $1, but the register price would be about $5 a piece.  After thinking about it, when I buy a case of copier paper, there are 10 reams, and my buy price for it is around $20, so $2 per ream.  So, if I picked up 2 reams of paper and 25 glue bottle, my out of pocket cost would be a little over $10, plus I would get around $8 back in rebates by check.  Plus, I could use the reams of paper for printing all of my online coupons.  Overall, our school supplies list totals $.75, plus a little tax.

The outcome was that I was able to quickly access the best deal for the items that we needed while maintaining a preschooler’s interest and getting in and out of the store in a matter of minutes.  As an added bonus, I was able to spend quality time with my preschooler while getting items checked off my ever growing list, and we both had a great time counting the glue bottles.

Pencils, folders and glue (partially) checked off the list… continuing to cut the crust off in our school supply budget.

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