CVS trip 3/13/2011

Today, I ventured to CVS.  I had $12.98 in ECBs to roll, and there were deals to be had.

Before I go too far, I have to say, while I only have one Extracare card, my mother has made her Extracare card available to me.  When there is a limit of 1, like this week's baby deal, having a second card to use is wonderful.  Today, I used Mom's Extracare card because I had earned ECBs on her card and they were due to expire later this week.  I have ECBs from my card, but they don't expire until April.  If you don't use them you lose them, and if I can't make it back to get a deal, or the deals are sold out, with my card's ECBs I still have time to roll those without losing them.

I decided to split my order up into two transactions.  Doing so would allow me to immediately roll ECBs from the first order on to the second, reducing my out of pocket (OOP) and reducing the amount of ECBs I'll have to work to roll later on.  I could have done a better job spliting it up had I thought about it.

For my first order, I got a pack of Tena.  They're adult incontinence pads.  I don't need them, but they're easily donateable.  They're on sale for $9.99 with a $9.99 ECB.  There's also a coupon on Tena's website for $2.50 off.  Money maker!

I paid for the Tena using $7.99 in ECBs, the $2.50 coupon from their website, and 12 cents in cash.  I got back $9.99 in ECB.  I made $1.88 on the deal (the rest of the $2.50 from the coupon was absorbed by sales tax).  I also still have $4.99 ECB that I walked in the door with.

In my second order I purchased 1 Enfamil Newborn powder tub and a 50 count Advil (which was oddly part of the baby deal, between those 2 I met the $25 threshold to earn ECBs), 1 Dulcolax Balance 14 count, 1 Dulcolax tablets 25 count, and (2) 150 count Dentek picks.

Both the Dulcolax are on sale this week for $4.99.  CVS mailed me coupons a few weeks back, one was for $5 off Dulcolax Balance 14 count, and one was for $3 off any Dulcolax.  $5 off a $4.99 product is my kind of deal, and for the price of sales tax I'm OK with adding it to my assortment of OTC medications for whenever we might need them in the future.  But it gets better.  Those coupons are both CVS coupons, which means I could stack a manufacturer's coupon on for greater savings.  A little web searching later and I found $4 off any Dulcolax coupons printable online (most online printables are a limit of 2).  So, I could get two Dulcolax, at least one of them being the Balance variety, for $9.98 - $8 in CVS coupons - $8 in manufacturer's coupons = $6.02 overage towards the rest of my order.

Dentek has an ECB deal, spend $5 get $2 ECB.  I had 2 $1 off 1 Dentek over $2 coupons.  My family likes and uses these products, they don't often go on sale or have coupons.  I selected (2) 150 count Dentek picks priced at $3.49 each.  Take off $1 each from my coupons, and they'll give me back $2 in ECB.  Not a bad deal.

I need formula.  Enfamil is what my baby prefers, and all this effort for money makers and overage was really a blatant attempt to get the cost of the formula down.  CVS's sale this week on Enfamil is really good, but with a little strategy I knew I could make it better.  The Advil was the low price, name brand item I could buy to hit the $25 that I also had a coupon for.  $22 for the Enfamil, with a $2 off coupon and a $5 formula check, $4.50 for the Advil with a $2 coupon, and hitting the $25 mark I get $10 back in ECBs.

I give the cashier my 2 CVS Dulcolax coupons, $8 in total, the ECBs I brought in and just earned on the Tena, $14.98, $2 Enfamil coupon, $2 Advil coupon, (2) $1 Dentek coupons, (2) $4 Dulcolax coupons and a $5 Enfamil check.

My total:  $3.58

My receipt prints $10 and $2 ECBs for the baby deal and the Dentek.

Let's do the math.

I walked in with $12.98  in ECBs.  I paid them $3.70 ($3.58 + $0.12 from the Tena transaction) in real money.  I walked out with $12 in ECBs and all that stuff.

$3.70 plus the 98 cents more in ECBs I spent than made, and if we say everything else was free, I just paid $4.68 for a large tub of Enfamil powder.  Those things retail around $25 in most stores.

I could have done better, but my CVS was out of the free after ECB Theraflu singles that I found a $2 off coupon for.  Maybe they'll have it later in the week.  If not, I'll get a raincheck.

Having a plan: Playing the drugstore game at CVS

My general strategy is to pay as little as possible for as much quality stuff as I can.  The more stuff I can get for my family at little cost, the more money I have free in the budget for other things.  When I started couponing, I first tackled learning to play the drugstore game.

Yes, I said drugstore game.  It's like chess.  You make all the right moves and you can be the hands down winner.  Name brand deodorant for the cost of sales tax.  Toothpaste that they pay you to take out of the store.  Laundry detergent for 75% off retail.  Free over the counter medication.  There are so many good deals to be had at the drugstores if you look.

CVS has the easiest rewards program to understand.  It's called the ExtraCare program, and the rewards are ExtraCare Bucks, or ECBs for short.  The most common way to earn ECBs is to buy items marked in the store or in the sale ad that have a listed ECB.  The simplist way to work the ExtraCare program is to grab the weekly circular and see what's free or nearly free after ECBs.  If you never bought a Sunday paper or printed an internet coupon, you could supply an average family with  free toothpaste indefinitely just by picking it up every time it's free after ECBs.

Here's how it works:  You buy something that generates ECBs.  You pay for it, and walk out the store with ECBs in hand.  ECBs are good towards your next order, though they can't be used to cover the sales tax.  Next week, you go back to CVS and buy something else that generates ECBs.  You pay with your ECBs, keeping your out of pocket expenses low.  Repeat.  The process of using ECBs to get stuff and more ECBs is called "rolling" ECBs.

It might not seem like much, but if all you do is pick up 2 tubes of free toothpaste a month that you would otherwise pay $3.50 each for, you're freeing $7 a month from the "Out" column on the budget.  That's $84 a year.

If your family uses 1 liter of mouthwash a month, and you avail yourself of the free/cheap after ECB mouthwash at CVS every month, instead of paying $5 a month for mouthwash you can pay, on average, $1 a month without ever clipping a coupon.  If you pay extra attention and buy the sale limit when it's free, you might never pay for mouthwash again.  So now you're saving another $4 a month, without clipping coupons.  It still may not seem like much, but you're now saving $132 a year.

Lots of other stuff is free after ECB pretty regularly enough too.  Eye drops, for example, are free after ECB on occasion.  Now, maybe you don't need eye drops this week.  That's OK.  I'm of the opinion that anything I can get that will keep long enough to be used that can be gotten for free should come home with me.  I get eye drops when they're free after ECB.  Last week, my husband had a horrible case of dry eyes.  He wanted me to run out to the store to buy eye drops.  I just smiled.  He's a smart boy, and he asked "do you have a coupon?"  Better, I have a couple of bottles of eye drops I picked up absolutely free from CVS during a past sale.  If I hadn't picked up eye drops when they were free, I would have had to go out and buy them.  Cheap eye drops are around $4.  A little foresight saved me $4.

Contact lense solution, cough syrup, heartburn relief, fiber laxatives, all of these things are in my medicine cabinet, and I got them all playing the drugstore game for free.  Some of them were money makers with the addition of a clipped coupon, but all of them were free on their own.

I may not meet all my family's OTC needs with freebies, and you might not meet your's, but an average person, NOT clipping coupons, can get several hundred dollars worth of stuff every year absolutely free for 2 minutes research a week and a trip to the right drugstore.  No coupon clipping required!

In addition to picking up the freebies, I'd highly recommend getting a Green Bag Tag and tacking it on to the reuseable bag of your choosing.  Bring your own bag, get your Green Bag Tag scanned, and for every four scans (limit one scan per day) you get $1 ECB.  It doesn't matter if all you've been grabbing is the freebies, you earn ECBs just by bringing your own bag.  Green Bag Tags cost 99 cents, and pay for themselves really quickly.

You also earn ECBs based on a percentage of your spending in the calendar quarter.  Since the goal is to roll ECBs and not really spend anything, don't be terribly surprised to not get much for a quarterly ECB.

And if you have prescriptions, you can earn ECBs by having them filled at CVS.

CVS has a Beauty Club, where you earn $5 ECB after you spend $50 on beauty products, and you get a $3 bonus ECB on for your birthday, and they have a Diabetes Care program too.

Feel free to look up the program specifics over at the CVS website.