We shop at Krogers where each dollar you spend gets turned into “Fuel Points.” Every buck equals 1 point and each 100 points equals 10¢ off a gallon of gas. Simple, Right? Not so much. Each prescription, whether a $4 generic or a $50 non-preferred, gets you 50 points. Buy a gift card and you get double points, but right now for the holidays we are in the middle of a two week period where you get 4x the points.
Points not used during the month are not lost, but carried over for one month in their own bucket. When you redeem your points for money off a gallon a gas it will take from last months points first if it is greater than the current month’s total. This is handy, in case you forget to fill up before the last day of the month, you can use them up in the first week or two of the next month.
At first we didn’t really pay attention to all this and just let the fuel points fall where they may, but when we noticed that sometimes a substantial amount of points were wasted at the end of the month, we changed our attitude. Now, we have gone so far the other way, that it borders on a game.
Tonight we needed a few things at the store, we needed to pick up 4 prescriptions and we needed some gas. When we left the house we had 176 points, add the 200 points for prescriptions, we are now up to 376. Our few items didn’t look like the $24 we needed to bump us up to the 40¢ off level, so we added a $25 Panera Bread gift card. Our total came to thirty five bucks and change.
Now our total points no stood at 486!?! Oh yeah, 4 times the points for the gift card. So now we need to spend $15 to put us over the next level. Donna says buy a $15 DD gift card. “Brilliant,” I say, “We can always use one of those.”
So I go back through the self check out line that I just came from and buy the $15 gift card. When I’m done I look at my new point total, 546. How the heck…? Then we both come to the same conclusion simultaneously, idiots, you don’t get the 15 points for the $15 and the 4x points, you just get the 4x points.
Donna says, “Well, go back and buy another $15 DD gift card and that 60 points will put us just over 600 level.” At first I refuse, but finally relent, under one condition, I get to go through a different check out line.
The Purples Whale’s low fuel light was on, so the 17 gallons of gas we got for $40, would have cost us $50 without that 60¢ discount.
My head hurt from all that cipherin’.