Saving at CVS

 

I wanted to share some tips and tricks on couponing at CVS. CVS is my favorite drug store to use coupons at. It seems to be super easy to use coupons there. There are a lot of great promotions each week that you can stack with store coupons and Manufacturer coupons to get many items for free. I know the most about CVS and their policies but I am still not an expert. I will show you how I only spent a few dollars on the products in the picture above!

First off…you need to have a CVS card. This will keep track of all your purchases and will allow you to get all the Extra Care Bucks(will talk about that in a bit) and keeps track of other savings. The cashier will almost always ask you for your card..but make sure to remember..it is a big help in saving at CVS. The first thing I do when I shop at CVS is go straight to the Red Coupon Machine. It is an amazing machine that prints out a few coupons each week with just a swipe of your CVS card. A few coupons will print out like a receipt and are usually good for a few days and sometimes longer. Some sites know which coupons are printing each week and a simple Google search should allow you to find them if you want to know ahead of time. I like to print these first because sometimes there are some surprises and make my transactions even better than I anticipated.

Now to take a few steps back and discuss how to plan your trip. I rarely plan my own trips. If I have some time then I will start from scratch and match coupons with the deals going on but I usually check with all the coupon sites that I follow and see their matchups for CVS each week. KCL(The Krazy Coupon Lady) has a great matchup each week found here. They also have a CVS 101 found on the same link that you should read first to know the CVS coupon policy.

The key to shopping at CVS is to get items where you will get Extra Care Bucks(ECB). These are printed on the bottom of your receipt. You don’t get this savings right away..it is for your next transaction. If you prefer to roll your transactions you can do it all in one trip. So, you would be doing a few transaction all in one trip..instead of waiting to use those ECB on another trip at a later time. I am too chicken to do the rolling. I found that many times other couponers already cleared the shelves and I have to redo my game plan so that is hard to adjust. I just hold onto my ECB for another trip.

Let me show you an example with the items in the picture above.

I bought:

1 Colgate Advance Toothpaste- 4.69…on sale for 2.77 plus 1.00 ECB which would make it 1.77(I take into account the ECB even though I won’t use them until the next shopping trip) plus I had a –1.00 MFR(manufacturer)… coupon for Colgate Advance…so the grand total for the toothpaste was .77cents

1 Almay Mascara 8.79….on sale for 5.99 plus 3.00ECB minus 2.00 MFR coupon making it .99cents. Now this was a bummer because there was also supposed to be a 3.00 coupon that printed from the Coupon Machine but I did not get it and forgot about it until after..but .99 is still a great price. Now, if I would have had the 3.00 store coupon as well it would have been…5.99-2.00MFR making it 3.99 minus the 3.00 store coupon making it .99 oop(out of pocket) and I would have also received the 3 ECB making it a 2.01 MM(money maker)…bummer

1 Carmex Moisture Plus 3.29 on sale for 1.50. I used a coupon from the previous week that I got from the Coupon Machine for –1.50 off making it free!!!!!

3 American Greeting cards…this is my favorite promotion CVS does. I have a large stack of free cards! When you buy three you get 3ECB…and it works on their .99cent cards. So I bought 3 for .99ea making it 2.97…there ended up being a –2.00/3 cards MFR Coupon that came out and so I paid .97cents and got back 3ECB!!!!!! Score!

Finally I bought 1 package of Huggies diapers. They were 12.49(crazy) on sale for 9.50…I messed up and thought I was getting 1 ECB but you had to buy two..another mistake gotta be careful. Anyways, I also had a –2.00 MFR coupon making it 7.50. This is not a great deal but I had a 5.00ECB from the previous week that I applied to this transaction.

Let me break it down a little better

Colgate 1.77oop

Almay 3.99oop

3 Amer. Greeting Cards .97oop

Carmex-free dtmp(don’t touch my pockets)

Huggies 7.50oop

total……14.23 minus the 5ECB from previous trip equals 9.23 then I received 7ECB making my total trip 2.23 plus tax!!!! Now if I would have got that extra coupon for the Almay I would have made money but oh well 2.23 for a transaction that included diapers is alright by me.

This is not all the ins and out of CVS but I hope it helps. Any questions just ask!!!!