Apples to oranges

When cutting back on spending it is possible to cut out certain items completely while other items cannot be fazed out. Perhaps not a matter of life or death, they remain important. Toilet Roll for one. Some brands evoke dust clouds that cause allergic bouts of sneezing in this household. I choose to avoid them altogether (I cant help but wonder WHAT that dust cloud is made up of and why i would want whatever it is to touch any region of my body in the first place). My family tends to buy the brands with excess dust... but i realize sometimes price effective buying precludes everything else in reality. Beyond the dust issue, I am open to debate when it comes to 2 ply or 4 - but really, I have better things to do than to debate the merits of tissue conservation.

Another item is cat food. I swear that I devote more time and energy to locating cat food for reasonable price than is reasonably reasonable. Old wives tales of seniors eating cat food are evidently just that. In fact -it can be cheaper to buy a whole roasted chicken once a week than it is to buy 5 cans of food that my dear feline will eat 5 consecutive meals of. Hes not picky - hes precise. He refuses to eat anything that is too gross to eat, simple as that. This month I lucked out and located cases of Fancy Feast at Costco - thus far he has eaten 50 cans in a row while only walking away from 4 dishes of cod (eww it looked nasty to me too). But hes at his threshold for eating the same 4 foods repeatedly and Costco lacks variety - I need quality discounted cat food fervently.

While at the shops last night I noticed an ad for www.smartsource.com. Like so many others - they post printable coupons - but what they do as well is post the prices of advertised items from the weekly circulars. I aim to keep an eye on it for a while and see if virtual price comparisons equal savings in the store. Of note - When i visited the site for Safeway i discovered they have coupons online as well. These are in addition to the Club Card savings we are all trained to presume are the deepest savings available. I have to say i was surprised more at myself than at Safeway - I should have searched for the deals, not just waitied for them to award them to me. A funky addition is the ability to clip these coupons and print them - Or to connect them to your safeway card from the site itself. No paper required. Cool Idea once you get past the dissapointment that you werent already getting the best deal by using your member rewards card.

Spoofee.com also compiles weekly advertisement circulars, has an online coupon code section as well as forums where people share links to products and samples they've found deals or samples of. Shoplocal.com lets you search circulars as well - but goes a step further to let you browse newspaper advertisements they have scanned in as well.