Bought shoes, shoes and more shoes

My wife and I needed new shoes. She needed new jogging shoes and I needed both joggers and cross trainers. Usually I would just go out and buy shoes when I need them, but this time I watched for sales. I usually buy my shoes at the running room, but this sale took me over to Sports Experts. I found cross trainers on sale for 59.99 (reg 99.99). I also found a nice pair of joggers that were usually 179.99, but were on sale for $119.99. My wife found a pair for the same deal. This was starting to look like a total savings of $160, $80 of which would be for the double project. Wow! Then I remembered that I would normally have bought them at the running room, so I headed over there to check out the prices. They ranged from $129.99 to $169.99. It is impossible to figure out exactly which pair I would have chosen so I decided I would be as conservative as possible and price them at $129.99. I really want to make sure this project doesn't affect my finances negatively, so this ensures it. So that is a $10 savings from both sets of jogging shoes. The running room doesn't have cross trainers so I decided to let the $40 savings stand on the other ones. $59.99 for Adidas cross trainers is a really good deal. So that totals $67.80 (including tax) in savings, $33.90 of which go to the double project. I also purchased something else on sale, which netted me $3.57 for the project. I am over the $150 mark and almost done this level! Time to browse the fliers!

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Quick update

Quick update today. I bought three more things that gained $1.32, $1.78 and $3.67 for the project today. Found many things that were $1.50 off, which is too low since I need $0.80 after halfing it. So I am up $6.77 for a total of $112.74 today.

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Bought something for myself

I had 4.77 burning a hole in my pocket (overshoots from previous levels). I decided to spend $2.25 on some 'wallet windows'. This is what people usually put pictures in, but being the crazy lunatic that I am, I plan to put coupons in them. That way I can flip through them at the store without having to fumble around with them. That still leaves me with $2.22 to buy things with. I'm a rich man!

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Gave to the Food Bank

I had $4.77 ear marked for charity so today I walked down to the grocery store and purchased 5 cans of vegetables (corn, beans, carrots, peas, etc.) for $0.89 each and placed them in the bin for the local food bank. It felt really great to know that because of the work I have been putting into my project, some families are going to have an extra can of vegetables some night when they would otherwise have gone without. I also dropped two coins into the 'blind dog' piggy bank to round out the $4.77.

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Car savings

I made two more purchases today.

1) Motor Oil. My car is not the best. I have to add a quart between oil changes as it seems to burn or leak it all before 5000Km. I have always just purchased an extra quart from the local gas station. I knew I was paying more, but I did not know how much more. I priced it at $5.49 where I usually buy it and then I went to Canadian Tire and found some on sale for $2.49 a quart. It was such a good savings that I decided to buy 8. With the reduction in taxes saved and splitting the savings between the real me and the project, this netted a cool $13.56 for the project.

2) When I priced the motor oil, I decided to also price the windshield washer fluid, which was $4.99. I usually buy it at the gas station as well. I found some summer stuff for $1 at Canadian Tire so I purchased two (only two because I can't use it when the winter comes or it will freeze. You have to buy the -40C stuff then. That netted me $4.51 for the project.

So with just two purchases, the project is $18.07 richer for a total of $105.97.

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I kept going with the grocery strategy today. Of course, each purchase only gets me half as close as it would have at the last level, but there are many purchases I can make that are above the 80c (1%) minimum. Today it was:

More batteries - but AA size this time. Shoppers Drug Mart had a 16 AA Duracel Pack for $7.77. I used the same base price as last time for the 12 pack because I have noticed that the 16AA pack is always the same price as the 12 AAA pack. Including tax and dividing by two for the projects percentage results in a $4.07 gain.

Kraft Dinner. Shoppers had a special $7.99 for a 12 pack. I know we will eat it so it qualifies. $4.07 gain for the project

Campbells Soup - Shoppers has these on for 59 cents, which is quite low. Loblaws has these as a base price for $1.20. I bought 6 for a gain of $1.83 for the project.

So all in all today, it was a gain of $7.90, which is close to 10%. Not bad for day 1.

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Completed Level 14!

There were two good sales today for things we would have bought anyways. The first was a specific cream that my wife always buys. It was $3.40 at my regular grocery store, but was on sale for $2.99 at Shoppers Drug Mart (plus saved tax). The other purchase was a gold mine and was worth 50% of the entire step. There is a product we use that usually costs $10.50. Another brand of it was on sale for $4.99, which is unbelievable considering I have never seen this product go on sale for more than a few dollars. I purchased 6 of them, which saved $40.68, half of which goes to the project.

In the end, the project total for the step tallied up to be $84.79. I decided to charge $2.00 for gas since I did do some driving around to the different stores, but forgot to keep track. Since the project is only benefiting with 50% of the profit (can you call it profit when you are just spending less?), I figure it should only be charged half the gas cost, so I will subtract $1 for gas, which leaves the $80 to complete the step and another $3.79 to split between myself and charity.

Looking ahead to strategy for the next level, the minimum transaction gain is now 80 cents. 11 out of 13 of my transactions from this past level would have qualified, so it seems reasonable to continue with the same strategy. Eventually the effectiveness of this strategy will run out, but for now I will keep running with it.

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