Your SDM stats 2016

[lecale]

How did you do with Optimum points in 2016? Anybody want to share?

We are a 2-person household and 25% of my spending at SDM is MILK.

Earned: 282k on $1855 before coupons and tax, $1552 after coupons before tax. Using that second number, I am getting 18.2X points on cash spent, every trip.

Redeemed: 286k (1 had 12k roll over from 2015)

Value of 1k SDM Optimum points: I got $440 for 286k which means 1k points = 1.54 to me. In the other direction, 649 points = $1. I usually redeem at $30 or $60 and very occasionally, $85. I don't have a car so I have no place to put my haul but on my back! I have to keep it under control.

Total spend Gross: $1998. Total spend net: $1255 ($303 was coupons and $440 was Optimum points. SDM was by far my most coupon-friendly retailer in 2016 and I used more coupons there than anywhere else. Second place was Zehrs and third, Walmart (which is also coupon-positive.)

Share any kind of stats you want. Interested to hear how SDM works for you! Please round your numbers so that they are easy to read, and no one can use them to stalk you!

[nalaric]

Fun!

I shop for 3-4 households (my fam of 5, my parents, grandparents, and my brothers fam of 6). I buy everything I can from shoppers that's a reasonable/comparable price to anywhere else (and some splurges). Spent $6000 oop in 2016, earned about 1,975,000 points, redeemed 1,875,000, almost all at $170, one at $200 ($3600 worth). Works out to overall savings of 38%.

Since I started collecting in 2012, I've redeemed almost $11k worth of stuff, for under $19k oop. I'm a little Shoppers obsessed. However, I anticipate my 2017 stats will be a lot lower, since the offers aren't quite as good as they used to be, my "baby" is (hopefully) almost out of diapers and pull-ups, and I don't shop for my brothers family near as much as I used to. Although I have still have 4 redemptions worth of points, so not slowing down yet.

[wendymac]

Lecale, you are awesome. Want a challenge? Let's outdo each other at SDM in 2017. I double dog dare you.

Seriously, I redeemed 5x in 2016, with 3 of them being $200 redemptions for 95K. The last 2 were around Christmas and I got 30,000 points back for each $170 redemption. That's how I got my DH an Acer tablet that was on for $169. I buy a lot of things at SDM and stock up like crazy when they offer decent prices on the sleepems that I take more often than I probably should. (A good night's sleep is much prized in our household.) I am recording all my purchases this year -- unlike last year -- and I don't have a good total of how much I spent in 2016. I will post what and when I spend, however, because it might inspire others just as your post has done for me. You DID get that it was a "double" dog dare, right?

[lecale]

Fun!

I shop for 3-4 households (my fam of 5, my parents, grandparents, and my brothers fam of 6). I buy everything I can from shoppers that's a reasonable/comparable price to anywhere else (and some splurges). Spent $6000 oop in 2016, earned about 1,975,000 points, redeemed 1,875,000, almost all at $170, one at $200 ($3600 worth). Works out to overall savings of 38%.

If I include both coupons and points I saved 37% on everything. Wahhh, you beat me

Awesome job!

[lecale]

Lecale, you are awesome. Want a challenge? Let's outdo each other at SDM in 2017. I double dog dare you.

Seriously, I redeemed 5x in 2016, with 3 of them being $200 redemptions for 95K. The last 2 were around Christmas and I got 30,000 points back for each $170 redemption. That's how I got my DH an Acer tablet that was on for $169. I buy a lot of things at SDM and stock up like crazy when they offer decent prices on the sleepems that I take more often than I probably should. (A good night's sleep is much prized in our household.) I am recording all my purchases this year -- unlike last year -- and I don't have a good total of how much I spent in 2016. I will post what and when I spend, however, because it might inspire others just as your post has done for me. You DID get that it was a "double" dog dare, right?

Challenge accepted! Sounds like you are mean competition!

This is my tracker design, in case you need an idea of how to set things up:

[Frugalbigmama]

Looking forward to reading this thread. Most of my points last year I received for shopping for work. I stopped shopping at SDM the past few years. Last year I did 3 redemptions. As of Jan 03 I have 219,375 in SDM points (I shopped later last week for work and received around 9,000 points )

I will shop if the deals are there and try and work it with a 20 x the point offer etc. But happy going into this year with 2 top redemptions available.

[nalaric]

Challenge accepted! Sounds like you are mean competition!

This is my tracker design, in case you need an idea of how to set things up:

wow you are dedicated!!! My 2016 spreadsheet is already 170 lines just for my transactions. There is no way I could itemize everything bought! Mine just looks like this:

Date	Cost	My OOP	base points	bonus points	pts redeemed	value of redeemed	other perks
1/4/2016	78.75	12	770	20000
	13.38	13.38	100	3000
				1000
1/6/2016	62.95	24	720	16000
1/11/2016	5.46			250	-95000	170

Cost is the amount paid, my oop is what it cost me (the rest was charged to family members who I shop for, who also get free stuff as well), base points, bonus points, redemptions, and other perks (movie or other certs ect). I don't keep track of coupons I use there. Kinda neat to see how other people track things though.

[lecale]

I use the same spreadsheet for each of my stores. I do surveys and I find these sheets make them really easy to answer accurately. Grocery store surveys want so much detail out of you, and it struck me: I could probably learn a lot about shopping if I tracked my shopping the way the surveys do.

Itemizing is not so bad because I buy on average 165 products per month. A lot of them are duplicate items so that cuts down on entries. A "huge" trip might be 15 lines.

I can search my spreadsheets and come up with last, highest, lowest price paid, frequency of purchase so it is actually really handy to refer to when I am planning my shopping. It has also helped me discover what each store is good at (e.g., NF has the lowest regular price on Premium Plus, Freshco has the best price on Bick's, etc.) so I know where to go when something is not on sale but I need it now.

I also found some stores are always giving SCOP or making mistakes at the register (I call that "Store Discounts" ) and other stores never do. I use piles of coupons at some stores and barely any at others. And I have the rate of return on spending for every loyalty program from this too. I use the top row totals (green) fed into another spreadsheet so I can directly compare my spending and rewards at each store.

[sirandrewr]

I never kept track of spending or points. I had $159 monthly insurance claim for 3 years and used it on 20x or 18500 with coupons which is pure profit. At the new year I'm down to $13 insurance claim. I have a shopping buddy so we can both take advantage of the $50/75 spent levels for our personal groceries. I spent time training him on picking the best deals instead of what you impulsively want. It was great having 2 Optimum card personalized coupons to chose from with some weeks both cards being used while some weeks one would be used. Lately we have been skipping weeks due to lower personalized offers. I look for high double/triple/quadruple point offers that end up free in points return value. I didn't care what the item was and just donated it to a community outreach centre. I took advantage of every possible rebate that was a free item just to collect the points and profit on the coupon. I mainly shop Friday nights for double ad prices. I get the lowest prices on my groceries, best point value and keep watch on what everyone says about coupon matchups too. I scan every item and write down the price so I can get my amounts down to the penny amount for spend offers that have a cap like 18,000 wus $75 According to the cashiers I'm one of two bargain shoppers but have never run into the other one. I feel like I have failed if the points (not the last 3 numbers) are less then half of the total. I feel great when the points value is more then the total. I learned everything from reading SC tips and I'm thankful for everyone's help. You people are great. New Years Resolution is putting all the possible coupon websites on a sheet for quick look ups. The coupons are out there and you just need to find them. I don't do apps and camera shots.

[tobiwobi]

my shoppers spreadsheet has these headings:

Date

Products

Total Paid

Optimum Promo

Points Earned

Overpay

Points Balance

Points redeemed worth minus overpay total

I have the 'overpay' column where I enter a dollar or whatever I feel I could have saved buying the identical item elsewhere, because shoppers does not have best prices for all items. Usually I won't overpay on something just to get the optimum points, but sometimes I grab things that I know are a dollar or so cheaper elsewhere. By tracking this, I keep the actual real value of the points in perspective. I deduct 'overpay' from points redeemed. I'm a party popper, I know but those redemptions are fun

[Colsgirl]

I find a lot of the times Shoppers is really expensive, the deodorant my husband uses is $4.97 in Walmart and $7.99 in Shoppers. The Pure Protein bars I buy in Walmart are 14.99 for 12 (regular price) and are $10.49 for 6 in Shoppers.

I'm going to be really interested in reading this thread to try and understand how you manage to get the prices to anywhere near competitive!

[lecale]

I find a lot of the times Shoppers is really expensive, the deodorant my husband uses is $4.97 in Walmart and $7.99 in Shoppers. The Pure Protein bars I buy in Walmart are 14.99 for 12 (regular price) and are $10.49 for 6 in Shoppers.

I'm going to be really interested in reading this thread to try and understand how you manage to get the prices to anywhere near competitive!

SDM and Canadian Tire are unique in their pricing because they have both the highest regular prices across the board and the deepest sales. And both have single (or sometimes only a couple) days where you can get a massive amount of points (20X+ days at both).

- You MUST watch the flyer
- You MUST watch what day of the week will offer the best deal in points
IMO anyway.

Almost all of my shopping trips are under $30, but there are great offers at that level. e.g., today I will go get milk, a bag of homo at $5.99 (overpriced by $.86 vs. the Zehrs across the street) and a bag of 1% at $4.27. I have 20X milk and 2k on $10 food and snacks (which is also 20X) so for two bags of milk I will get 40X worth about $6 to me on a purchase of $10.26. I totally recommend buying milk there.

[nalaric]

SDM and Canadian Tire are unique in their pricing because they have both the highest regular prices across the board and the deepest sales. And both have single (or sometimes only a couple) days where you can get a massive amount of points (20X+ days at both).

- You MUST watch the flyer
- You MUST watch what day of the week will offer the best deal in points
IMO anyway.

Almost all of my shopping trips are under $30, but there are great offers at that level. e.g., today I will go get milk, a bag of homo at $5.99 (overpriced by $.86 vs. the Zehrs across the street) and a bag of 1% at $4.27. I have 20X milk and 2k on $20 food and snacks (which is also 20X) so for two bags of milk I will get 40X worth about $6 to me on a purchase of $10.26. I totally recommend buying milk there.

Exactly! You must know your prices, watch the flyer, and decide how much "extra" you are willing to pay. If I'm saving 30-40% overall on everything I buy, I'm ok with a 10-20% extra on a few things. There are certainly things I would never buy from shoppers, since they are priced too high.

I buy all my milk, eggs, butter, pop, chips from there, as they are either cheaper or very closely priced to elsewhere. Milk personal offers are a huge bonus. 2K on $20 is only 10x bonus, not 20x though.

[lecale]

Exactly! You must know your prices, watch the flyer, and decide how much "extra" you are willing to pay. If I'm saving 30-40% overall on everything I buy, I'm ok with a 10-20% extra on a few things. There are certainly things I would never buy from shoppers, since they are priced too high.

I buy all my milk, eggs, butter, pop, chips from there, as they are either cheaper or very closely priced to elsewhere. Milk personal offers are a huge bonus. 2K on $20 is only 10x bonus, not 20x though.

I get 2k on $10 regularly and that is my weekly offer this week. You would think that sucks but it suits me perfectly and I get it quite frequently. So with that coupon, it is 20X. I also got 4k on $20 food and snacks as my Friday offer, so that is another 20X. Paired with 5X,10X,20X milk, it's a real deal.

EDIT: and duh, I fixed my typo! Now I understand what you were saying.

If you like PepsiCo pop & chips, SDM weekend sales are the best prices out there. WM offers Ruffles at 3/$8 which is $2.67; SDM goes as low as $1.88.

I also like the $2/2kg no name flour because it is a convenient size to store and I'm "wasting" no more than a couple bucks vs. buying a 10kg bag on sale. It takes me a year to use 10kg anyway; I don't like the idea of it hanging out in my kitchen picking up cooking smells. They also have deals on cheese, and they offer Saputo/Armstrong who tend to offer a lot of coupons.

I am also into the weekend bathroom tissue/paper towel deals and $4.99 any Tide, I do all my shampoo, mouthwash and toothpaste there, pantyliners, hair colour, wax, razors, vitamins, and D grew himself a big wart and it took $120 in Compound W to kill that thing! Ewww, so glad it's gone, and bye bye wart offers too gack! But I did get OTC meds and wart offers lol oh joy.

But I have a pretty focused list of specific products and varieties that are cheaper at SDM than elsewhere (I mean, that list is it!), and I always buy these things at SDM, and buy multiples at once.

My general approach is that I have a general list for each store of the 20-30 or so products I will buy there and then I just hit one store a day (and I can usually narrow it down to 2-4/week). E.g., I can look up black pepper and see it's under WM and then check my history to see I'm buying 350g container at $6.50...and it's not on sale so I can go any time. Or SDM for Carefree because it is the only chain that carries the type I like, sale price to look for $2.99, have to check the flyer and probably hit a weekend-only sale, probably have to wait too.

It was actually SDM that taught me this approach and I have to say, my shopping experience is much calmer this way. I used to do 2-4 stores in a day chasing after sales and trying again after one store's regular price was too high; now that I now all the regular prices from my sheets I can plan my trips down to the $ total and relax a lot more. I already know where the price is lowest; I don't have to rediscover this every week (though I do continue to scout prices elsewhere just in case.)

SDM takes more effort to plan for than other stores because of their one and two day sales and offers, but it is probably the most fun to strategize on. Going to WM just doesn't have the same thrill - unless there's a fight lol.

[Arvilish]

Mine is simple as piece of crap!

Household with tons of brothers! So many that sometimes, I think I live in sovereign residence!

Most of the items were food like candies and milk/yogourt/eggs every single week

No idea about spending (about $30 per week) but earned 2300 points! I forgot to claim my Bday and other free points

EDIT: I think I will get back on SDM this year for sure!