Today's grocery shop - How I squeeze every penny of value out of it that I can.

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Having been through periods of financial hardship in the past, I'm always keen to get maximum value out of every penny I spend. I don't always succeed, but I try. In particular, I like to take advantage of every cashback offer, discount and loyalty card scheme that I can when I'm grocery shopping. This morning's shop is an example of how I'm going about things: There are three supermarkets where I regularly shop, and each one has it's own loyalty scheme. The one where I shop most often is Morrison's and it's where I did my main shop this morning. I'm a member of their "More Card" loyalty scheme, which is a bit more complicated than I'd like, but I do get discounts and points towards vouchers, so it's worth it. Morrison's periodically sends out vouchers to it's More Card members, and also sometimes issues vouchers at the till. I save these up and use them when I can. I had a few vouchers off them that I could use today, and which were expiring soon, so I planned today's shop accordingly. One voucher was for £2.50 off a £25 shop, and I also had another one that offered a certain number of More Points if I spent at least £30. Plus another couple of lower-value vouchers that gave points for things like buying bread and meat. So I had it in mind to maximise my return by spending just above £30, mostly on fairly basic supplies that would last a while. No point spending unecessarily on frivolities just to get a bonus. Also in the interest of maximising my return, I bought £35 worth of Morrison's gift cards from topcashback.co.uk. These got me 2% cashback, which came to 70p, which sits in my Topcashback accoun until I've got enough saved up to buy more shopping vouchers. To pay for those gift cards, I used a cashback credit card which I recently got. For the first year only, it pays 1% interest, so that's 35p cashback for £35 worth of gift cards. Every little helps. So armed with gift cards, vouchers and a long shopping list, I toddled off down to Morrison's this morning. Took advantage of ever discount and multi-purchase offer that was applicable to me (bearing in mind the size of my fridge). According to my receipt, the total value of what I bought was £47.83. With the various discounts applied, that came down to £35.17. Then the £2.50 discount voucher that I had was applied, bringing the total down to £32.67. I used £30 of the gift cards I'd bought from Topcashback to pay most of this, and paid for the other £2.67 with my cashback credit card (so that will be another 2p or 3p cashback I've got coming). Not too bad, and what I bought should keep me going for a while. The groceries paid for, I headed back to my car and chucked them in the boot. Before I drove off, I got my smartphone out and opened an app that I downloaded the other day. It's an app called Clear! which pays for scans of receipts. You just open it up, point your phone at the receipt and take a picture. It reads the date of the receipt and the total price paid. Having done that I was immedialely credited with 10p. In the couple of days since I downloaded the app, I've used it to scan a couple of other supermaket receipts (10p each) and a receipt from the post office (only 5p, but better than nothing). Once I've got £5 in my Clear! account, I'll be able to cash out. Since I've only just started using it, I've no idea how long this will take. I'm also not sure yet if it'll work with any receipt, or just certain types. I'll try it with petrol receipts, tram tickets etc and see what works. Getting hope, I open up another app, which I've been using for a couple of years, Called Nielson IQ. This is a bit more involved than Clear! but it pays me about £100 per year. I start by scanning the receipt with my phone, then scan the barcode on every product I've bought, enter the amount of each item and whether it's on offer. Sounds longwinded, but I've made it part of my routine as I unpack things and put them away. At the end, I enter my total spend. The app then credits me with points, which I save up and eventually use to buy a virtual Mastercard, which I then use to buy giftcards through Topcashback. So in summary, I'm organised to get cashback on top of cashback on top of cashback, along with whatever discounts I can get. And that's not all. Having packed all my groceries away, I still have two ways of potentially making money off my receipts. First, I go to my computer and scan the receipt. I then upload the scan to a website called Checkoutsmart. This website has different offers for different supermarkets. If your receipt includes a product that Checkoutsmart has an offer on, they'll give you some money back, sometimes enough to cover the purchase. I have to admit that I've never yet come across an offer on Checkoutsmart that relates to my purchases, but evry time you upload a receipt there's also an option to enter a free draw, and if you win you get the total of that receipt back. I've never won the prize draw either, but I might do, one day. The final way I try to claw a bit of value back doesn't relate to all the supermarkets that I shop at. But on the back of the receipts you get from Morrison's there's an option to enter an online survey. The survey's just about the shop you've just done, what you think of the store etc. It just takes a couple of minutes to fill in, and then you get entered into a prize draw. The prize is £500 worth of Morrison's vouchers. My thinking about those two prize draws is that not very many people are likely to enter them, so the odds aren't too terrible. The Morrison's draw in particular would be worth winning. So that's how I do my groceries. I'm always looking for new ways to maximise value and save money that I can.