Deal on Halloween Candy

Our church, CrossRoad Church on Gate Parkway, has been asking for donations of candy for their Fall Festival. The Fall Festival is an outreach to the whole community, and it's very popular every year. Last year, I was working at one of the booths that had a lollipop game, and these cute little kids that had been bussed in (they had their names and a contact phone number pinned on their shirt!) kept coming to the booth--I gave them extra candy! Anyway, it made me wonder if there might be some ways to buy candy for little or no money using coupons and then donate them to the church. Here's a deal to get bags of fun size M&Ms for $1 a bag. I'm counting ExtraCare Bucks:
This week at CVS, bags of mini M&Ms or Snickers are buy one get one free. They also have a deal where you can get $5 in ExtraCare Bucks if you spend $20 on Halloween candy. In this Sunday's paper, the RedPlum had a coupon for $1 off 2 bags of candy, including and M&Ms and Snickers. Here's how this would work:

Buy 6 bags of "fun size" M&Ms for $3.50. You'll get 6 bags for free.

The total cost of 12 bags with this sale would be $21.oo, qualifying you for $5 ECB. Subtotal=$16

Use 3 coupons from the Sunday RedPlum (I habitually buy 2 Sunday papers every week, plus my mom gives me her coupons. If you only bought one paper, you can get another one any time during the week at any Gate gas station. I've also seen them at Publix after Sunday). That will give you $3 off. Subtotal=$13.00

That makes the total cost $13.00, or $1.08 per bag. Total out of pocket would be $18.oo, and you'd have $5 ExtraCare Bucks to spend.

You can save another $5 by going to CVS.com and taking the flu quiz, which is only 5 questions. They give you a coupon when you're done. You have to spend $25, but they have some other items for free this week (through Tuesday) that would push your subtotal before discounts up to $25: Halloween nylon treat bags and 4-in-1 carving tools. There's a limit of 2 tools and one bag.