Nature Valley Nut Cluster Money Maker: $500 Worth of Food For Free

  • Posted by
  • August 16, 2010

Why would I ever imagine that things would slow down now that the 100 days of eating on $1 a day are over? I returned home from Oregon (which in itself was an experience — I watched a box spring mattress decide that it wanted to learn how to fly as it freed itself from the back of a pick-up truck going 70 mph on the highway. Unfortunately, the box spring mattress learned that flying isn’t what mattresses are made for and instead came crashing down on a car a few cars ahead of mine. If you have ever wondered, I can confirm that flying mattresses are damn scary when seen on the highway and they cause a lot of damage to cars they happen to hit — luckily nobody was hurt)

Once I made I home safely, I found that blog reader Samantha has sent me a bunch (and I mean a bunch – Samantha works at a newspaper and sent me all the extra inserts they were going to throw away) of Nature Valley Nut Cluster $1.00 off 1 coupons. It turns out that even without an eCoupon, the Nature Valley Nut Clusters are a $1.00 Moneymaker this week because they are triggering the Nature Valley Catalina Coupon. This is how the scenario works

Nature Valley Nut Clusters are priced at $2.49 each

They are part of the Safeway Buy 4, Save $4.00 instantly program. It turns out that you don’t have to buy in increments of 4, so if you buy 5 Nature Valley Nut Clusters, you get $5.00 off making them $1.49 each.

Use five $1.00 off 1 Nature Valley Nut Clusters coupons from the General Mills 8/8 Sunday newspaper coupon insert brings down the price to $0.49 each.

You pay $2.45, but you receive a $3.50 Catalina coupon back good on anything on your next purchase. That means if you buy another 5 Nature Valley Nut Clusters, use another 5 $1.00 off 1 coupons and the $3.50 Catalina coupon you just received, you can buy $1.05 of anything you want, get it all for free and receive another $3.50 Catalina coupon. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I ended up buying 120 packages of Nature Valley Nut Clusters:

nature valley nut clusters

And in addition, I picked up I bag of tortilla chips, 6 large cucumbers, 5 packages of Wacky Mac veggie spiral pasta, 8 bananas, 4 kiwis, 1 mango, 1 flower of garlic, 1 can of refried beans and 10 loaves of bread:

free food bank food

In all of these purchases, I didn’t pay a cent:

free food receipt

And all the food added up to $507.88 for free:

free food receipts

All this will be donated to local food banks. I am hoping to find a little time tomorrow as well to do a few more store runs to get even more free food fro local food banks.

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Reader Comments

Comment Number:
1
Written by:
Mary Jo
Posted on:
August 17, 2010 at 3:29 am

LOL! I am going to Safeway today to do the same thing. Unortunately, I don’t have quite as many coupons but I do plan to get paid for 10 bags of granola clusters and 10 boxes of fruit snacks. I will also be donating this to our food bank. Did you have the Fuel for School catalina deals in your area? I got paid to buy about 80 boxes of cereal and tons of other breakfast products in the past few weeks. My food bank actually had to turn away some cereal because they didn’t have room to store it all!

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
TK
Posted on:
August 17, 2010 at 4:11 am

Does your food bank take fresh produce?

Comment Number:
3
Written by:
Carol
Posted on:
August 17, 2010 at 7:33 am

Great job! I have a question though – I thought I saw on the Vons/Safeway add that there was a limit of 20 items for the buy 4 get $4 promotion. Is this just a 20 item limit per transaction, or per club card?

Comment Number:
4
Written by:
Nichole
Posted on:
August 17, 2010 at 8:35 am

I wish they had Safeway on this coast

Comment Number:
5
Written by:
lina
Posted on:
August 17, 2010 at 8:42 am

Good job on so much stuff for food banks. i have a question i started couponing inspired from your blog and i love it, a question would be any suggestions how to get lots of sundays newspapers or from there cheap or free, now i buy 3or 4 every sunday but it would be great if i could get more.thank you

Comment Number:
6
Written by:
Tiff
Posted on:
August 17, 2010 at 8:47 am

WOW! I have to read this again slowly. Amazing!

Comment Number:
7
Written by:
mmmdonuts
Posted on:
August 17, 2010 at 9:33 am

Awesome dealing! Where I am in So Cal, Vons lists a limit of 20 items on the ad for this catalina. Just in case, I used two different Vons cards to do this deal twice, but I’m curious to know – is that kind of limit “per customer” – do they track it on your club card? – or is it a “per transaction” limit?

Comment Number:
8
Written by:
Jill B
Posted on:
August 17, 2010 at 10:14 am

I feel left out of a lot of these deals bc we don’t have Safeway around her – wondering if some of the catalinas translate to other stores? I remember someone mentioning a catalina at Kroger at the same time one was working for Safeway. Any idea of a source to learn about Kroger (except for Walmart, the only non-regional grocery, if you can believe it)?

Comment Number:
9
Written by:
Phil
Posted on:
August 17, 2010 at 11:57 am

It’s great that you are going to help us be better coupon people. I have already been having fun at CVS for the past two weeks because of you. I take advantage of the deals and then buy the things that I need and save at least 75% on my purchases. Just one little favor, please add a picture of your daily smoothie for us to enjoy.

Comment Number:
10
Written by:
jeffrey
Posted on:
August 17, 2010 at 8:30 pm

@TK

Yes, mine does.

@Carol @mmmdonuts

20 per transaction

Comment Number:
11
Written by:
Sandra
Posted on:
August 18, 2010 at 8:35 pm

Just wondering… I notice that you use the same type of coupon multiple times in one transaction. Is this the norm? Because some coupons say one coupon per transaction… do some cashiers or stores ignore that and they just let customers use as many coupons as they want in one transaction.

Comment Number:
12
Written by:
jeffrey
Posted on:
August 18, 2010 at 8:46 pm

@Sandra

Yes, this is perfectly acceptable. A transaction means one coupon per item (not one coupon per time through the cash register). The only ones that will point that out are new cashiers that haven’t been trained properly and if that happens, simply take the purchase to the customer service counter where there shouldn’t be a problem.

Comment Number:
13
Written by:
Ryan
Posted on:
August 19, 2010 at 8:10 am

Is this deal still ongoing?

Comment Number:
14
Written by:
jeffrey
Posted on:
August 19, 2010 at 8:49 am

@Ryan

Unfortunately, no. Sorry about getting it up so late – I was gone the first part of the week and didn’t get to try it out until the week was almost over.

Comment Number:
15
Written by:
Ryan
Posted on:
August 19, 2010 at 10:39 am

To use a VeggieTales-ism: “Drat.”