I got a slow leak in a tire a couple of days ago, and by the time I noticed the tire was in pretty bad shape. I managed to limp over to a gas station with air, and fill the tire, but sure enough, by the next morning (this past Sunday) it was low again.

Now the only tire place open on Sunday in my area is the Sears Auto Center, and of course they were pretty busy. My experience has been that when this type of thing happens the tire is repairable about one out of maybe five times. Usually, you end up
buying a new tire.So I got the Sunday paper and sat down to wait my turn to get the tire looked at.

I found something interesting in the CVS circular: $10 in ExtraBucks if you buy a $50 Sears giftcard. Offer limit of 2! Well, heck, in my situation that is pretty much free money. In between waiting on the tire (yup, it needed to be replaced), I walked over to CVS in the mall and bought the giftcards. Used them to pay for the tire and has about $18 left on one of them when it was done. The Sears Auto Center folks also gave me two coupons for the main Sears store, one good for a month on one good that day only. They were both for $5 off a $25 purchase. So I used the "today only" coupon to pick up a rice cooker, which I'd been wanting to buy, and some clearance clothes for my son.

Today, I headed to CVS again, equipped with the $20 in ExtraBucks from the tire situation, plus another $5 in ExtraBucks that I'd gotten on my previous shopping trip.

Today proved to be a good day for ExtraBucks shopping with coupons. First of all, there was a free-after-ExtraBucks offer on Old Spice bodywash. But what's better than that? How about also having a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for that product? I also had a nice $5 coupon on a razor that had and ExtraBucks offer as well as some other pretty decent deals.

Here's the breakdown:

3 boxes Cheerios @3/$10 (reg. $4.59, $4 ExtraBucks for spending $10)
2 Old Spice Bodywash @$4.00 (reg. $5.29, Free-After-ExtraBucks AND BOGO coupon)
1 Herbal Essences Shampoo @$5.99 (reg. $7.99, $2 ExtraBucks and $1 off coupon)
1 Gillette Fusion razor @$9.97 (reg. $10.99, $5 coupon and $5 ExtraBucks)
1 Off bug repellent @$5.49 (reg. $6.49, $3 coupon)

Total Before Sale Prices Coupons and $25 in ExtraBucks: $48.88
Total Cash Actually Paid: $1.51
ExtraBucks Received: $19

As always, stuff that I'm not personally (in this case the shampoo and body wash) using gets donated to a local homeless shelter or women's shelter.

Of course it's never fun to get a flat tire, and I'm out the $82 it cost me to replace it, but part of the whole frugal thing is being able to make the most out of situations where expenses arise.