Karen from Frugal Rhode Island Mama: Drugstore Deals at CVS!

My name is Karen and I am a mom to two girls ages 4 and 2 and married to a wonderful man who totally supports my blogging and saving habit.  I blog at Frugal RI Mama and I have fun finding and sharing good deals especially at the Drug Stores.  Did you know that you can get Health & Beauty items that you use everyday like soap, shampoo, deodorant, razors, lotions and more for FREE at the drug stores!  Yup, you read that right I said for FREE!!!    Now I don’t just mean the travel sizes, I mean full size, name brand products.

Unless you’ve done this in the past, your probably wondering how this can be possible and what do you have to do in order to get this stuff for free.  I can tell you this, you don’t have to jump through hoops but you will need to do just a little bit of planning ahead of time to organize yourself and if you read my blog each week, I’ll tell you exactly how to do it.

Have I caught your interest?  I hope so!  Here is how this works.  Pretty much every week CVS, Walgreens or Rite Aid will offer you something for free and here is how they do it.  Since each store does it differently I’m going to briefly explain how CVS works.

CVS has a program called Extra Care Bucks.  Basically it’s like an instant rebate that you can apply to your next purchase.   They will put an item on sale and then give you Extra Care Bucks if you purchase that item and you can then use it to either purchase another product or hold onto it and roll it into another product.  And the best part is you use coupons to maximize your savings.  Here is an example.  Colgate Total toothpaste is on sale for $2.49 and when you purchase it you will receive $2.49 Extra Care Bucks.  You find a coupon in the Sunday paper or a printable coupon for $1.00 off any Colgate Total toothpaste.   Here is what the transaction would look like:

Colgate Total, On Sale $2.49
Use $1.00 coupon
Total Out Of Pocket = $1.49
You get $2.49 ECB’s for your next purchase or next week’s sale

What I like to do is roll this into another sale so I don’t have to pay much or even anything out of pocket and here is how I do this.  Next week Pantene Shampoo is on sale for $3.99 and you find a $1.00 off any Pantene product coupon in the Sunday paper or a printable coupon and when you purchase the shampoo you will receive $3.99 in Extra Care bucks.  Now you have $2.49 ECB’s from last week.  Here is what the transaction would look like:

Pantene, On Sale $3.99
Use $1.00 coupon
Use $2.49 ECB’s from last week
Total Out Of Pocket = $.50
You receive $3.99 ECB’s for your next purchase, or next week’s sale.

Then the following week Speed Stick Deodorant is on sale for $2.99 and you find a coupon for $1.00/2 in the Sunday paper or a printable coupon and you will receive $2.99 in ECB’s.  The limit is 1 so you will only receive the ECB’s once.  If you want to use the coupon and buy 2 that’s ok.  Sometimes I will do this and sometimes I will just forget about using the coupon and only buy 1.  It depends on what I need/want or how many ECB’s I have.  For this example I will buy the 2.  Here is what the transaction would look like:

(2) Speed Stick Deodorant, On Sale $2.99
Use $1.00/2 coupon
Use $3.99 ECB’s from last week
Total Out Of Pocket” $.99
You will receive $2.99 ECB’s for your next purchase or next week’s sale.

After these 3 transactions you have :

Colgate Total
Pantene Shampoo
(2) Speed Stick Deodorants

And for all of this you paid only $2.98 (+ tax) and you still have $2.99 in ECB’s that you can keep to roll into another deal or grab something you need that may not be on sale.  You can’t beat that deal!

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