The $1 Thanksgiving meal challenge just got a lot harder. There were two recent store coupon updates that are going to make the $1 Thanksgiving meal challenge that much more difficult to complete. Both are bad news for those of us that use coupons to get food for free (or nearly free).

CVS BOGO Coupon Change: CVS used to have a coupon policy where when they had a buy one get one free (BOGO) deal, customers could use 2 coupons (one for each of the two products). This now appears to have changed and CVS is only allowing a single coupon to be used on BOGO deals. Since being able to use two coupons would often make items free, this is a huge change. Here is an example from the recent past — under the former policy you could get Mentos Gum for free because you could use two coupons, but using the new CVS BOGO coupon policy of only one coupon results in the gum costing $0.79 (or $0.40 each).

Safeway eCoupon Change: Safeway is implementing a new eCoupon program where you will be allowed to load manufacturer coupons directly onto your Safeway club card (and it will also give you individual pricing deals on some products that you buy frequently). While this would appear to be a plus (I hate clipping coupons as much as the next person), as part of this new program it appears that they will no longer allow the stacking of eCoupons with physical coupons, something that often created free product and money maker opportunities. Since this new eCouponing program is just beginning to be launched, there is still some questions about exactly how this will affect those that “super coupon” but it appears that it will be much more of a negative than a positive.

This will obviously throw a wrench into my goal of creating a Thanksgiving meal for 6 people for a dollar, but I am still going to give it a shot. I’m almost done planning my meal and then it will be time to try to begin securing the products I need to make it happen. Wish me luck…

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