You Can Sometimes Get Dollar General Items for a Penny. Here’s How

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Dollar General marks discontinued items at a penny. See how to score items for almost free and improve your personal finances by paying rock-bottom prices. 

Finding an unbelievable bargain is rare in today’s world when inflation has sent prices skyrocketing. But there are still some amazing deals to be had — especially if you know where to look.

Specifically, if you get lucky, it’s possible to buy items at Dollar General for just a single penny. Here’s how this can happen and what you should do to maximize the chances of getting these bank-account-friendly items.

Why you can get Dollar General items for a cent

Penny items at Dollar General become available by chance because of the way the store treats items that are supposed to be pulled from the shelves.

Typically, items are supposed to be marked down to as low as 90% off. Then, once they are discontinued and intended to be pulled from the store shelves, the prices are reduced to just $0.01. This is supposed to be a signal that the item is not to be sold but is instead to be removed from the inventory.

Often, though, those items are not actually removed from the store shelves right away. So they’re available in the store and priced at a penny. If you can find them and take them up to the cash register, cashiers may or may not sell them to you. While the official policy is that they aren’t supposed to be sold, people are commonly able to buy them — thus walking away with a big score.

How to find penny deals at Dollar General

If you want to keep more money in your savings by buying items for a penny, you’ll need to be smart about how you do it.

First, you should know you can’t ask at the store what items are on sale for $0.01, nor can you find them listed in any sales flyers since they are only for sale at this price by mistake. There are a bunch of online lists people publish, though, so you can get an idea of the items you’re looking for.

You’ll also want to go shopping on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, since the items are usually marked down after a Tuesday clearance event. While you may be able to find them later in the week, there’s a good chance they’ll be gone since people will either have bought them or they’ll have been cleared from store shelves by workers.

You should bring as many of the items as you want to buy up to the register when you find a penny item, as the sales staff may go and clear any remaining ones from the shelf once you’ve brought the item up and they see it’s priced so low. You can also check the price on the Dollar General app if you download it on your phone, to make sure they’ll really ring up for a penny before you buy them.

You may not always find the items on the list since the selection varies by store. But it can be fun to hunt for them, and you can save a lot of money if you get lucky and find penny items you want for sale.

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