Drugstore Games

Do you play the drugstore games in which you buy products and get coupons or vouchers to spend on future products? The main ones to use are Rite Aid, Walgreens, and CVS.  My sister-in-law gets great deals from Rite-Aid, but it is out of the way for me so I rarely go.  I mainly use CVS.

In the small town near me we have a CVS and during the school year I go by it twice a day, so it is easy for me to pop in and get a few things (as easy as it can be to shop with 5 kids.)  I normally get our soap, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrushes, feminine supplies, razors, etc for next to nothing and usually get cheap toilet paper and paper towels.  With us now having teens and preteens we go through lots of hygiene items and that is good.  I want them to smell good.

What I do is get the coupon inserts out of our local paper, and the usually get 2-4 extra of the Atlanta paper if I see there are good coupons that we can use.  I will cut them and put them in my binder if I have time, if not I just clip like inserts together and write the date they were put out with a sharpie.  I then go to a website that tell me what is on sale at CVS and what coupons to match.  I almost always buy stuff that gives back extra bucks and use extra bucks from my last purchase.    Extra bucks are like cash that take money off of your next order.  When I get them at the end of my receipt, I put them in my wallet with my cash for the next time.  Here is an example.  My kids love Aussie shampoo.

The Aussie was on sale 2/$6.00 and gave a $1.00 extra buck back with purchase.  I had a coupon for $1.00 off of 2 which made it $5.00.  I also had a $4.00 extra buck from my last purchase, so I used that and my price became 2/$1.00, and then I got back $1.00 extra buck to use next time.  See how that works?

I don't do extreme couponing.  I don't have the time and we don't eat most of the foods that you can get coupons for, but I do get small stuff from CVS and we almost never pay full price for toiletries!