Why was Jerry Seinfeld always eating so much cereal in his apartment? Well, how about because cereal is freaking delicious! Who doesn’t love cereal?
If you have kids, I’m sure they LOVE cereal. My dog loves eating cereal off the floor, Jerry Seinfeld as mentioned, loves cereal and I love cereal! What’s not to love!?
Breakfast on a Budget
Okay, so Jerry’s a wealthy guy and I’m sure he can afford all the cereal he wants at full retail price from Whole Foods, but what about the rest of us?
Cereal should be a staple breakfast for anyone trying to save money, it’s abundant, it’s cheap and it can even be healthy. That’s assuming you’re not buying the multi-coloured boxes with dancing rabbits or magic leprechauns gracing the front. Avoiding these can be a challenge with kids…
When buying cereal for kids it’s also easy to get a variety of requests. When I ask which cereal to bring home, it’s usually “Cheerios”… “Oh, and Honeycomb!” “Can you get me some Shreddies?” “I want Mini Wheats!”
Kids can’t make up their minds and I can’t blame them. All the colours and deliciousness to choose from can be enticing. The good thing is cereal is relatively cheap and has a long shelf life, so it likely won’t go bad before they’ve devoured it (or showered it on down on your floor).
Spending too much on Cereal?
Okay, so we’ve established cereal is inexpensive AND delicious. So how do us frugal people get cereal even cheaper?
First of all it’s important to know the prices of grocery store items, how to find the best deals and stock your pantry when those sales happen. Making sure you aren’t overpaying for items is key #1. Discount grocery stores will usually be selling cereal for a fair amount cheaper than the fancy Longo’s, Sobey’s and Metro’s of the world more often than not.
Key #2 is to be aware of the box sizes relative to the pricing. Family sizes or club packs are usually the way to go, but not always! For example when my spouse questions my judgement (and sanity) after returning home with a 1.6 kg club pack of Froot Loops. In any event, make sure to check the “per 100 grams” pricing on the shelves to do a proper comparison and make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck. Many times I’ve seen “sales” on the medium size box of cereal, only to find out that the large box at full price is actually cheaper per gram. In some cases the reverse has been true as well. So always check your cost per 100g!
Key #3 is the big tip – watch for coupons, discounts, promos and rebates! Cereal is so cheap that the manufacturers can afford to almost give it away at times when running promotions. A frequent discount that I’ve been able to pick up on specially marked Family Size boxes of Kellogg’s cereals are $5 Visa prepaid gift cards.
VISA Gift Card Promotions
This promotion has been around for awhile and originally I remember it being marketed as “Gas” cards or with the actual physical cards looking like gas station gift cards. I’m not quite sure why… but that led to the cards being ignored by a lot of people simply because they didn’t realize how the promotion worked.
As mentioned, many thought these gift cards were $5 prepaid gas cards, so it’s understandable to think it’s going to be a hassle to fill out a form and send away for cards you then have to bring to a specific gas station and redeem as a small denomination. Basically a pain in the rear. But the thing is, they weren’t gas cards!
These promo cards are actually plain old spend them on anything, prepaid Visa Gift Cards. The only real annoyance is the small value of each card. I’ve generally gotten around this irritant by just loading them onto my Amazon gift card balance to make things easy. So, no hassle redeeming small gift card balances – and essentially depositing them on Amazon allows you to spend them on almost anything.
So you can buy two boxes of cereal and get $5 back, big whoop right? Well another part of the promotion that people often don’t realize is that you can submit for “up to 5 cards per household”. So you can actually end up with potentially $25 off your purchases of 10 cereal boxes. Not bad! I’ve seen the prices of these specially marked boxes as low as $3.99 for the family sizes. So when you factor in the discount – $7.98 – $5 = $2.98 / 2 boxes = $1.49 each for a family size box, which is pretty decent!
And while the promotions have always been limited to five gift cards per household, if you or your kids love cereal as much as Jerry Seinfeld, there’s always a family member or friend that I’m sure will let you mail away for some gift cards on their behalf – maybe you even have a tenant at your home address who could accept another five for you? 😉 😉
As you can see from my latest stack of gift cards, I’m not exactly new to the cereal game and have taken part in these promotions before.
Even Cheaper Cereal or Donate to Food Banks
Now for the super cheap (or super generous), I’ve seen this deal come up a few times now in various forms but it’s a great way to score obscenely cheap cereal. That is, if you have no shame in walking through a checkout line with 50+ boxes of Cheerios, this might be right up your alley.
Every once in awhile a deal comes up that will give you almost the equivalent of the cost of cereal in points such as air miles, PC Optimum points or similar. An example promotion as seen here you would buy 5 boxes @ $3.99 each to score 95 bonus air miles, stack another ‘brand promotional’ offer for spending $25 on that specific brand = another 100 bonus air miles. Now do that 8 times to get your total bill up to $200 = 125 bonus miles, plus the regular air miles you’d get on the purchase = 1 Air Mile for every $20 spent.
Confusing, right? Yeah this is only for you crazy people, but there are lots of us that will go to great lengths to save some money. Here’s a simplified breakdown of the deal:
| Cereal | Points |
|---|---|
| 50 boxes purchased (5 boxes = 95 miles) | 950 Air Miles |
| Spend $25 on specific brand (x8) | 800 Air Miles |
| Spend $200 at Soberys/Safeway | 150 Air Miles |
| Total | 1900 Air Miles |
Conclusion
When all is said and done, you end up spending $203 for the equivalent of about $200 in air miles (1900 @ 0.105 cents/mile). And of course 50 boxes of delicious cereal. The similar promotions for things like PC points work out to around the same, where you get $200 in money to spend on groceries and the cereal works out to around $0.08 cents a box. If you’re feeling generous you can just take your cash back / points and donate all the cereal to your local food banks!
So there are lots of ways to save money on cereal, some a little crazier than other,s but that’s part of the fun. And even if you don’t intend to consume all the cereal yourself and just want to collect some points, you can do that too and everyone wins!
Hah, yeah saw that on Red Flag Deals. I thought no way I’m buying 50 boxes of cereal!
20 boxes is my limit.