This morning I hit Rite Aid and CVS. I didn’t hit EITHER of these stores last week so I was jonesing for a deal. PLUS my favorite favorite paper towels in the world were on sale & +UP Reward at Rite Aid so I had to get ON That. We were almost out! Here’s my Rite Aid loot:
(By the way, I have finally earned enough wellness + points to get a 20% discount on all regular-priced items! WOOT WOOT!)
Two Viva paper towels (my ABSOLUTE FAVE!!) $6.99 each = $13.98
Crest Whitening + Scope $2.69
Schick Hydro 5 razor $5.99
Sunsweet Prune juice $3.05 (with wellmess + discount) {Ahem Miss Sophie currently needs this!}
Rite Aid apple juice $1.79 (with wellness + discount)
-$2 two Viva $1 off manufacturer’s coupons found on display at Meijer (thanks to my friend Celia for giving them to me!)
-$1 Viva Rite Aid video values coupon from last month
-$1 Nivea lip product from today’s inserts
-$ 4 Schick Hydro 5 from today’s inserts
– $2 Schick Hydro Rite Aid video values coupon
-$1 Crest coupon from last week’s P&G
-$6 in +UP Rewards
=$8.19 + $1.42 tax = $9.61! I paid with my $10 Rite Aid gift card from the recent Oral Care rebate, so my out-of-pocket was ZERO! And I got back $4 +UP for the Viva (2 each), $1.99 for the Nivea, and $2.69 for the Crest for a total of $8.68 in +UP Rewards. Yippeee!
Next up was CVS. I was happy that when I scanned my card at the coupon scanner, I got $4 ECB for my quarterly spending! Yay! I did two transactions and got all this:
First transaction:
Renu contact solution $7.99
Schick Hydro 3 $8.97
Playtex Gentle Glide $6.99
Duracell Batteries $6
Skippy $1.67
total = $31.62
coupons:
-$5/$30 CVS email coupon
-$4 Schick Hydro 3 coupon from this week’s inserts
-$ 2 Playtex Gentle Glide printable (not sure if the printable is still available -there is a $1 off in this week’s inserts)
total = $20.62
I paid with $9.80 in ECB, making my total $10.82 + $1.51 in tax = $12.33. I got back 7.99 ECB for the Renu, $5 for the Schick, and 2 for the Playtex for a total of $14.99 in ECB! Which I then used to buy:
coupons: -50 cents, two 25-cent off coupons from last week’s P&G
Total = $19.50. I paid with my $14.99 ECB and paid $4.51 + $1.40 in tax for a total of $5.91. I got back 10 ECB for the Charmin and the Duracell in the previous transaction as part of the buy $25 of P&G products, get 10 ECB promo.
I was pretty happy with my shopping trip today! I went in for my favorite paper towels and came out with so much more!
You may have noticed I didn’t do any drug store shopping this week. That’s because the deals just weren’t doing it for me this week. BUT…I did have a deal planned that I worked on all week that I was able to execute last night with my partner-in-crime, Maria. (Go ahead, click on her name and check out her blog! It is awesome and so is she!!)
Maria with her boys. I just wanted to show you how cute the all are!
Yes, first I am going to make you read the back story!
Last Friday I was at Maria’s house talking bloggy business when she mentioned she had learned in a committee she is on at our son’s school that the #1 wish list item for teachers at school was Swiffer Wet Jets. Apparently, getting down on your hands and knees to clean up constant spills is a pain!! Oh wait, I already knew that, but I only have a two kids spilling crap all over my house as opposed to…25 spilling all over a classroom! Yikes! However, as you can guess, the cost of Swiffer Wet Jets and refills was not exactly in the budget. So Maria decided to form a sub-committee to try and figure out how to get these teacher wish-list items inexpensively.
And she just happened to be talking to the right girl. I LOVE a challenge like this!! And this is how I see “God in the coupons” – I went home and started looking online at sale ads for this week and saw that Wet Jets were going to be on sale 25% off at Walgreens this week. Maria had been calling around to different stores to see if we could get a discount and Walgreens had already agreed to give her 15% off. SO – that made for a good price. Then, I started trying to find coupons. I found that there were $5 off Wet Jet starter kit coupons in the September P&G that were expiring 9/30. So I put out a call in Facebook for friends to send me any if they had any! I also purchased a few from a coupon clipping service – since they were expiring so soon, they were only 8 cents each for a $5 off coupon!
THEN when I opened up this Sunday’s P&G insert, there was a coupon for a FREE REFILL if you bought a starter kit! I put out another call in Facebook for these coupons and was able to collect 16 of these, and Maria got a few too!
SO – the plan was in motion!! Maria ordered the Wet Jets from Walgreens and we set a time to pick them up – they would be delivered Thursday, 9/30 – so we could still use the $5 off coupons! THEN I saw that Swiffer products were also 20% off at Meijer, with a $10 rebate if you bought $35. I had a Meijer $5.50 of a $55 purchase coupon, so it was actually a better deal for me to buy three units w/ refills there. So before heading to Walgreens, I went to Meijer and I did this transaction:
Three Wet Jet starter kits $15.99 each = $47.97
Three liquid Swiffer Wet Jet refills $4.36 each = $13.08
total = $61.05
coupons:
-$5.50/$55 Meijer purchase
-$15 three Swiffer Wet Jet starter kit coupons
-$13.08 three free refill WYB starter kit coupons
=$27.47 +$3.89 tax = $31.36 and I will get a $10 rebate Mastercard back!! So $21.36 for three Wet Jets and three refills!!
Then, it was on to Walgreens!! The only snafu we hit there was they only had FOUR refills in stock. (Misunderstanding – Maria had told the manager that we needed them as well but for some reason they didn’t come in. And of course he wasn’t working when we came to get them.) 🙁 We were bummed, *but* there is hope that the manager will order them in for us and honor our free refill coupons – Maria was going back in to talk to him today.
**Update** Maria went back to Walgreens to talk to the manager today and they are going to honor the 14 free refill coupons for us!! The refills will be in next week!**
We bought 18 more Wet Jets and 4 refills – and did each transaction individually because you got a $2 register reward with each one!!
So each transaction (with the available refills) looked like this:
=$10.40 + $1.20 tax $11.60 for a Wet Jet & refill PLUS $2 register reward back so net was $9.60! And we did this EIGHTEEN times. Unfortunately only 4 times WITH the refill but like I said we are hoping to still score some more. (We did end up with 10 total refills from purchases I had made earlier in the week and at Meijer.)
Maria took the Wet Jets and refills into the school today and the teachers were ECSTATIC! It was so exciting to be able to fulfill this need for them thanks to coupons and sales! We got what would have been over $550 worth of merchandise for less than $200 (after register rewards and rebate)!! And when we get all 14 that will be another approximately $85 in merchandise.
Yay for teachers, coupons, and getting things done!!
Thanks to the very nice manager and cashier at Walgreens who took an hour helping us get these items for our teachers!
This was definitely the largest-scale coupon operation I have ever attempted! Maria and I were pretty “high” when we were done even though we didn’t get all the refills we wanted. It was super-exciting to see a plan come together and to help make our school’s teachers lives a little easier! Now I just have to keep constantly watching the sales (like that’ll be hard! ha ha) to make sure we keep them stocked up with refills all year.
It’s the first of the months and there are new coupons available to print at Coupons.com! Some of my favorites include coupons for Huggies wipes, Ronzoni pasta (I DO enjoy getting free pasta with these doubled coupons!!), Sargento Cheese and Glade Scented Oil Candles (yes, I STILL love those after all these years!!)
