I Must Confess: I Am A Cereal Killer.

The basics of combining coupons and sales can really be broken down with one grocery item. If you're not sure where to start, the easiest way to get the hang of the couponing gig is to get in on some cereal.

Albertsons and Safeway both ran a special for specific name-brand cereals for $1.88 each. A couple of weeks ago, I had clipped coupons for $1.00 off any 3 General Mills cereals (Albertsons), and although I didn't have any coupons for Post cereals (Safeway) it's rare to beat a $1.88 price.

The cereal shelf in my stockpile.

I took the few coupons I had to Albertsons, and started with the General Mills cereals. I had 2 $1.00 off 3 General Mills Cereal coupons, and I grabbed a few each of Total, Lucky Charms and Reeses cereals. All normally retail for about $4.00 depending on what side of town you're on.

So Retail would have been around $40.00 for the 10 boxes that I picked up. But I paid:

10 boxes
x $1.88
$18.80 Sale Price
- $2.00 Coupons
$16.80 OR $1.68 each

Then I headed over to Safeway to round out my cereal offerings with some Honey Bunches of Oats, Honey Roasted. I was only going to get 3 boxes, but while at the store I checked the Clearance rack in the back and found three Honey Bunches of Oats w/Strawberries that were not only on sale for $1.88, but were ALSO 50% off due to having ripped boxes from shipping. The bag inside the boxes were fully intact, so I snagged those, too. These cereals also normally retail for around $4.00 each.

Retail, the six boxes I picked up would have cost around $24.00. But I paid:

6 boxes
x $1.88
$11.28
- $2.82 for damaged boxes
$8.46 OR $1.41 each

So, $25.26 later I've got myself a stockpile of cereal that will last us roughly 6-8 months (we only eat cereal a couple times a week). That gives us enough time to consume the goods before the "Best By" dates printed on the packages, and saved me a total of $38.74 on my 6-month grocery bills plan.

These cereal deals are really frequent throughout the spring (I picked up Kix and Trix on a similar sale last week), and almost all grocery stores do them. Make sure you watch your ads - and if you've got an Albertsons or Safeway near you, these prices are good through Tuesday, April 8th!