The Grinch Who Stole the Christmas Candy

Its hard to say that a company who paid me to take candy off of the shelf at CVS this week is a Grinch, but if you are planning to buy holiday candy you may want to take a second look at the package. While at CVS I discovered that a package of Holiday Hershey Kisses are only 8.5 oz while the regular package is 12 oz. Both packages are on sale for $2 each before the buy $20 get $10 ECB deal. You may prefer the holiday packaging if you are planning a special project using Chirstmas colors, but if you are looking for the least expensive candy buy the normal packaging instead.

Due to our current economic state, more companies are reducing the contents of the packages without lowering the price. Some companies are redesigning their packaging while other packages are staying the same but are not as full as they previously were. Most reductions will be 10% or less to prevent most consumers from noticing the decrease in size. Lisa recently sent me this Newsweek article discussing decreases in the package contents.

The long term reduction in the amount is a form of inflation if the cost of the product stays the same. In the case of the holiday candy, I would say Hershey's is taking advantage of the sentimental consumer and possibly trying to make up for the additional costs associated with the promotional packaging. However, I wouldn't be too surprised if there is a reduction in the size of their regular packages in the near future.

Remember to stay alert for price and size changes when purchasing products. Even a seemingly small difference adds up over time.

News From the Managers

A couple of items of interest that I learned this week when I was speaking with my managers. Establishing and having good relationships with your local managers is important if you are a regular shopper, but even more so if you frequently use coupons. If you don't know the manager (or assistants) at least by face at the store you most frequent I encourage you to say hello the next time you are shopping.

CVS
When I was at CVS this week my manager told me that Atlanta will be a test market starting in a couple of weeks. I was not clear on all of the details, but it sounded like the possibility of a different ad schedule and maybe even two ads per week. I have not seen an upcoming ad yet to determine if this is a good or bad thing. I thought I would share this so that you can expect to see some changes coming.

Publix
When I did my "Hamburger Helper Transaction" this week, I thought that with 63 coupons my transaction would require an overide by a supervisor, I had the cashier call one of the assistant managers. However, the assistant manager said that he thought Publix had raised the limit of coupons in one transaction to 99 because they were seeing increased coupon useage. I can tell you from first hand experience that the cash register will allow at least 63 coupons in one transaction. Is the increase coupon usage a sign of the downturn in the economy or people becoming more aware about couponing?

One day I had a thought...

that I could to help others through my experiences. Since I really like to save money and I like to help others so I am going to give it a try.

The original inspiration for this blog came many months ago from an e-mail my husband sent me one morning.

"Looks like you were ahead of the curve, as usual. Had frugality and common sense before frugality and common sense were cool.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/21/news/economy/moms_foodshopping/index.htm

Tim"

I'm still in development at this point and am new to blogging, but I wanted to go ahead and get started as it seems that many people are asking me how I save money and I want to be able to help them as much as I can. I am a procrastinator and a perfectionist so it has taken me many months to get to this point, but here we go.

I hope that my readers enjoy this blog as we learn together.