So today’s lesson is do not go shopping for any length of time with a toddler! Andrew was so good in the beginning of our shopping trip to CVS. They have buggies with little cars attached to the front and he asked if he could ride in that, so I said yes, thinking he would behave. He had his little cars and he was happy…until about check out time, then he couldn’t sit still and it was worse in Wal-mart!
Besides that fact I did score some pretty good deals today. One man’s Gillette fusion power razor ($9.99 at CVS, $9.79 at Wal-mart) FOR……$1.08! Talk about excited!! Even Shane was impressed there, lol. I’ve learned several things in the last few weeks of “Couponing”. When you go to stores frequently you get to know the people that work there. At CVS there are three people I encounter regularly. The one lady is so helpful and absolutely sweet…she even gives me tips, shhhh! I “learned” that you can scan your CVS card at the kiosk a few times and it may give you several coupons. One of those was a $2.00 coupon for chips/popcorn. The popcorn was not the size listed on the bag and was for $1.27, but I “learned” that you can still use the coupon and it will subtract the entire $2.00. So, I bought .99 cent skinny cow cookies, they are up by the register, that gave me .99 cent Extra bucks; a sucker for my son in an attempt to make him behave; and the popcorn. The transaction totaled .79 cents after taxes. She also introduced me to a second card that CVS offers, the Greenbagtag, it is in the shape of a leaf and is .99 cents. It is supposed to promote using reusable shopping bags, which will depend on the store. My store doesn’t seem to care if you have the bags or not. But after the card has been swiped four times, only once a day, you earn a $1.00 Extra Buck.
The other lady gets frustrated easily and isn’t thrilled with us “couponers”. You can see it in her face. The truck came in yesterday and when I went shopping today the shelves were still as bare as they were on Wednesday evening. So I needed rain-checks. Make sure you get a rain-check, because they do not expire so you can use them at any time and you can combine them with coupons. After my fourth set of transactions she got a little sour faced when I told her I needed my rain-checks; it is not my fault there was nothing on the shelf.
Another thing I have learned with CVS is that you have to make several transactions and you have to do them in a specific order to be able to save the most money. I already had four EB’s from Wednesday when I purchased milk (1 EB) and four 12pk of Cokes (3 EB), the cokes I bought for church and I’ll get that money back when I take the cans we save to get recycled. I bought my Skinny Cow cookies which gave me a .99 cent EB and used that a long with the 4 EB’s from Wednesday and a $4 coupon to buy my $1.08 razor, which in turn gave me 5 EB’s. The 3rd transaction was everything else on my shopping list that gave me Extra Bucks back. Along with coupons for buy-one-get-one free Axe products I spent $23.84, saved $28.68 and got 8 EB’s back. The last transaction did not give me any EB’s back, but after the 8 I just earned and coupons I spent $19.45 and saved $38.58.
Another thing that I’m learning about couponing is that you may have to buy several small items of what you want. I bought 5 bottles of Dawn dish liquid 10.3 oz (priced at .99) and used 5/.50 cent coupons. When I went to Wal-mart I bought 4 single packs of Tide detergent for .97 cents (travel section) and used 4/$1.00 coupons. I know have enough of those to do six loads of laundry. The thing with Wally world is that even thou the product was only .97 cents it will still take the entire $1 off the transaction. You also have to watch the cashiers there because they may want to go by the pictures. The coupon was not specific, it read “one tide detergent”, but there was a limit to how many you can use in a transaction (READ YOUR COUPONS!). I had a couple more coupons that read something similar and the cashier wanted to argue with me, but I told her it isn’t specific while the other s were. She gave in and entered the coupons herself. Also the big thing with Wal-mart is price matching. You save gas this way; you don’t have to run all over town. A 12 pack of Charmin TP was priced at $6.34; I got it for $4.99! I think I price matched about seven different items and then saved another $10 just in coupons.
I didn’t visit Target this week, but when I went a few weeks ago I cut my bill in half there too! Target will let you use one Target coupon, usually found online, and one manufacturer’s coupon for an item. Also check out the clearance shelves. Sometimes these are on the end caps; look closely in the health and beauty section by the Pharmacy. I found toothpaste on sale which I was able to use coupons with.
It is time consuming, but my husband should have enough soap and deodorant that he should smell pretty good for a while. And I’ve taken toothpaste up to church to put in the pantry.
