Walgreens Shopping: You Won't Believe it 'til You Try It! :)

Tons o' coupons in the paper this week!  Of course, since we've ended one month and begun another, I had to clear out all the ones I didn't use that expired April 30, in order to make room for scads of new, hopefully-usable coupons.  One thing I learned right away when I started clipping coupons is that Proctor & Gamble owns almost every company imaginable, it seems.  Crazy! :)

I decided to talk about Walgreens and CVS separately, since they work a little bit differently, and because I'm too short on time to cover both tonight.  There is a lot of money to be saved at Walgreens, if you plan correctly and remember the guidelines they have in place.  Walgreens is a bit more complicated than CVS because Walgreens has a few more rules.  But, if you can  figure out Walgreens (and you CAN!), CVS will be a cinch!!

WALGREENS SAVINGS
 If you look at the Sunday ad, you'll see some products that are on sale, and if you buy a designated amount, they will give you "Resister Rewards" to use on a subsequent purchase.  The Register Rewards are printed on coupon-sized paper (they're called "Catalinas") and usually expire 2 weeks after the issue date.  The way to get the most bang for your buck is to use manufacturer coupons on these deals as well.

For example:
On the back page of the ad for this week, you will see they have Kellogg's* cereals on sale, 2/$5.  At the bottom of that purple box, there is a smaller box labeled "Register Rewards."  This tells you that if you buy 2 boxes for $5, they will give you $2 in Register Rewards, so it's like getting them 2/$3.**  Better yet, if you go here, and print a coupon ($1 off 2 boxes), it will be like getting them 2/$2, or $1 per box of cereal.

Once you start collecting the Register Rewards, you're likely to have some to use each week.

Another option is to do more than one transaction at a time (divide your items, on a single visit, into several groups, to use the RRs from one transaction on the next, and so on).  I've never done this b/c it seems more complicated (to me) than I care to get, though I may try it sometime if it seems worth it to me for a particular item.  You can pay for some items, get the RR back and use them for your next group of items and so on. 

Also, you can use 1 Walgreens coupon AND 1 manufacturer coupon per item.  Sometimes Walgreens will have coupons in their ads and they also have a monthly coupon book that you can get from the front of the store.

A couple things to remember:

• You can't use a Register Reward issued by a certain company on an item from the same company (i.e. If you have a RR that says "Schick" on the front, you can't use it to purchase another "Schick" item).  This is what I've always been told.  Just this past week, though, the lady at Walgreens told me you CAN use it on a product from the same company, but if the product is supposed to issue a Register Rewards coupon, you won't get it.  I guess it's kind of like "six of one, half-dozen of the other."
• You have to have at least as many items in your order as you do coupons and RRs.  So, if I'm using 7 coupons and I only have 5 items that I'm paying for, I'd have to add a couple cheap items (a couple pieces of candy, pencils--things that will be used and not cost too much) to have 7 items.  This is kind of dumb, in my opinion, but it's still going to save a lot of money if the "extra" items are inexpexpensive.  Sometimes they have really cheap clearance items.

So, there you have it--a brief description of Walgreens shopping.  Does it make sense?  Ask any questions you have!  If you're new to this, practice!  Get your Walgreens ad and coupons out and see what deals you can find!  Please be sure to read my footnotes below, too. :)

*I used these cereals as an easy example, but I don't actually recommend or buy most Kellogg's products because they haven't gotten with the program and removed the high fructose corn syrup from many of their products.

**Be careful, as you collect Register Rewards, not to count them twice when you're figuring out what you're saving.  It's easy to think, the day you get the rewards, "Oh, I got these boxes of cereals for the same as $1 each," thinking in your mind about the $2 RR.  Then, next week, as you're figuring out what to buy and you put the $2 toward your purchase, you're likely to count that $2 as part of your savings then as well.  I prefer to just use what I have for the purchase I'm making now to figure out what my savings are.  For instance, I might buy $12 worth of their sale items, have $3 in manufacturer coupons, $7 RR from last week that I'm applying to this order, and only pay $2 out of my pocket.  If I receive $5 RR from this transaction, I don't, in my mind, apply that $5 to this transaction and think to myself that I made a $3 profit.  I keep that $5 RR out of my mind until I'm figuring out my next purchase and apply it toward that.  You CAN make a profit on certain items sometimes, if you plan right.  But avoid the temptation to count your RR twice when you're figuring out your actual savings! :)