Thanksgiving is literally just around the corner. Are you ready? What's your budget? Are you able to provide a Thanksgiving spread for your family right now? Times are hard.
If I had to go to the store right now and purchase everything that I would need to cook a Thanksgiving dinner for my family of 7 - NOPE. Couldn't do it. We don't have that kind of budget just laying around. Especially, when I also have to be able to provide all the meals for every other day this month!
Let me give you a few easy ways to provide a Thanksgiving dinner for you family right now! Thanksgiving 2020.
First - check out his picture below.
Everything in this picture could be yours TOTALLY FREE! Well, kind of. Let me explain...
Have you heard of ibotta? If you are not currently using this app - I URGE you to start. NOW!
Here is a link to sign up! If you enter my code: SKUIHIC it will get you set up to earn a FREE $10 on your first receipt redemption. FREE MONEY!
Ok. So, ibotta is a cashback app that is pretty awesome. (I AM NOT SPONSORED BY IBOTTA! I wish I was!)
It's fairly simple to use and really helps me stretch my monthly grocery budget! The cash rebates that I receive from my purchases go directly back into my grocery spending account.
Ok. Let's get back to that picture. Ibotta is offering a FREE Thanksgiving dinner from Walmart right now. It is limited rebates supplies and many stores are having limited stock on these rebate items because everyone is cashing in on this deal!
So, if you don't already have an ibotta account - you need to do that first here!
Once you sign-up, you will need to head to the ibotta DESKTOP website. It has to be done on a desktop. Login through the desktop page. If you scroll down just a bit, on the right hand side there will be this:
Just click on that and it will walk you through how to add the offers.
There offers are:
- 1 turkey breast roast
- 1 bag of frozen green beans
- 1 box of stuffing
- 1 package of instant mashed potatoes family sized
- 1 can of green beans
- 1 can of cream of mushroom soup
- 1 container of crunchy onions
- 1 can of cranberry sauce
- 1 packet of turkey gravy (THIS DEAL IS SOLD OUT)
The general idea of how this works is, you add all the offers to your ibotta account. You can either shop through the ibotta plug-in at walmart.com and do a grocery pickup OR you can wait a few hours and go into the store to hand pick your items. With a few of them, there are multiple flavors that you can choose from. Also, I have noticed that some Walmarts like to say that an item is out of stock during the grocery pick-up, when it is indeed IN STOCK! I find this very frustrating and annoying. So, I just prefer to go into the store to get exactly what I want.
Now, you might notice, that my turkey in my picture above is NOT the same turkey that I listed in the offers. This is true. The offer actually covers ANY Butterball turkey of ANY size. But you ONLY receive $9.98 back in cash with your rebate. That is the exact price of the turkey breast roast that is pictured on the rebate. This was partially a personal preference and partially because my Walmart said they were sold out of the turkey breast roasts when I ordered my pick-up order. I went into the store later - THEY WERE NOT SOLD OUT. This is why I mentioned maybe waiting for the offers to load on your mobile app and just going into the store to get them yourself.
Now, even if I had gone into the store to pick out my own items - I likely still would have grabbed an actual turkey over the turkey breast roast. For a few reasons. First of all, the size and the amount of meat to feed my family. One of those roasts, would not have fed my entire family of 7. A family of 4 - YES! Maybe 5 if your eaters are young. But everything else fed us PERFECTLY! Another reason I prefer and actual turkey is because of the bones! I use the carcass and all the bones later to make homemade bone broth! I have purchased chicken or beef or any kind of store bought broth or stock in YEARS! I will share how I make this at a later date. This turkey ended up costing me about $8. If I had shopped for it myself, I would've chosen a slightly smaller one that where the cost would've only been about $3-5 for me. But that's OK. We have leftovers for days!
So, you add the offers to your account via the website plug-in. You either shop right then and there through Walmart for a grocery pick-up order. OR you wait a few hours for the rebates to load to your phone app and then you head to the store to grab your items. You purchase the approved items and pay for them up front. This comes out to about $25 dollars or so. If you ordered through the plug-in and chose the pick-up option, that's it. Your rebates will be automatically added to your account. If you chose to go to the store and pick out your own items, after you pay for them, you need to open the ibotta app on your phone and choose the REDEEM button, scan your receipt, make sure all items are included for the rebates and that's it! The rebates will be loaded to your account.
With your rebates you have a few options. You can transfer them to your PayPal account. Or you can redeem them as gift cards to places like amazon! They have so many gift card options.
OK. That's it. That's how you could get a completely FREE Thanksgiving dinner right NOW for Thanksgiving 2020!
A few other ways to provide a Thanksgiving dinner on a budget...
Check with you local food pantries and churches. Most will either provide you will all of the fixings to make you own, or they will over an already made meal where you just have to show up to eat!
Pay attention to grocery SALES at your local stores. I have seen turkeys for as low as $.67 a pound! Hams for as low as $.49 a pound! Canned veggies for as low as $.25 each! Frozen veggies for as low as $.50 a bag! Stuffing for as low as $.66 a box or bag! And potatoes for as low as $.19 a pound! If you don't want to go through the ibotta process - you still can provide a very delicious meal at a very CHEAP cost. It just takes a little preparation. These sales will start in early November usually and will run all the way through to New Year's Eve.
STOCK-UP!!! I canNOT stress this enough. When you do find these amazing prices and deals like what I have listed above - BUY EXTRA! Throw those things in your freezer and/or pantry. Most of those items will last you until next year!
The last option I have for you to think about is shop discount stores! We have a few really good ones here in Iowa. I found them by heading to Google and searching "discount grocery stores iowa". It gave me a huge list. I have visited several and have found a couple that I love where I know I can always find good deals. The only down side to this is - you never know what they are going to have. So, we keep a pretty decent freezer and pantry stock of foods. Any time I find an amazing deal on something...I buy several. Rule of thumb is 1 for now, 2 for later. I usually buy more than that. But if you don't have the space...I'd go by that philosophy. :)
So, the Thanksgiving dinner you saw above was all completely from that ibotta deal! A total cost to me of $8!!! I already had all the seasonings and fixings that I needed in my cabinets.
And I have all the ingredients I need for ANOTHER meal just like that on Thanksgiving Day, in my freezer and pantry. Items that I have accumulated through sales and the discount stores.
You can do this!
Ok. That's all I have for you.
I hope this helps!!!