my cvs shopping trip

My husband has been home for the past 3 days and will be today and tomorrow too. We've been taking care of a lot of stuff around the house. Our internet is switching over and dropping our phone line today. It won't be back on till tomorrow (sometime before noon). Hopefully nothing extremely awesome will happen between now and then. lol

For those who are reading this blog for the first time, this post is about my CVS trip yesterday. To get into the CVS deals, you'll need to sign up for a free Extra Care Card (do it online or in the store - you get it immediately when you sign up in the store). This will help you get items discounted and earn "2% cash back" in the form of ECBs. ECBs are Extra Care Bucks that print out with your receipt when you buy certain items. You can use the ECBs like store cash on your next transaction or save them for future transactions. They do eventually expire, so just make sure you use them before that. It takes a small investment and helps stretch your dollars to be able to get more than you would only walking in with your cash. Think of it like a small deposit box on a piece of paper. If you pay attention to the sale ads, there are items you can use your CVS cards on and get things for free while rolling over the entire amount of your ECBs (see transactions below - such as the Revlon makeup and CVS pantyliners). I know guys won't need those two things, but you should always try to take advantage of these deals because if you don't need them, you can bless someone else who will (even charity) without spending a dime or using up your ECBs.

Yesterday I made my trip to CVS. I spent quite a bit out of pocket but also got a LOT of stuff for free thanks to my ECBs from the money I did spend. I still came out with $25.99 ECBs for my next trip. Not bad for walking in with a lot less EBCs than what I left with and spending some inbetween walking in and walking out.

My first transaction was on the Revlon Limited Edition makeup on sale for $9.99 (getting $9.99 ECBs back), another package of .99 CVS pantyliners (which was my limit of 2 so it also popped out a $1.50 off coupon in addition to .99 ECB), and a package of bandaids. I've seen other CVSers choose the novelty bandaids - such as Hello Kitty, Cars, etc - but I found some colored bandaids with ointment already on the bandaid and got those for the deal instead. The bandaids were $2.99 and gave me $2.00 ECBs back.
grand total was .15 out of pocket because I used up my ECBs.
however, I got back everything but .99 cents of that back with new ECBs.

My second transaction I bought the $10 of candy to get $5 back in ECBs. I also bought 2/$1.59 palmolive and paired it with two .25 coupons from Sunday's inserts (one was from a neighbor). So basically I got that 2/$1.09!
I used my ECBs from the first transaction and paid .12 out of pocket.

My third transaction I bought a ton of stuff that cost way more than my ECBs (though I did use up what ECBs I had). We were just in need of stuff that happened to be on sale even though I did buy things that gave me more ECBs and I hardly bought anything that wasn't paired with a coupon or two. Too bad they don't print out coupons for beer. haha Corona 12pk longnecks were only $11.99 (usually over $15 even at Walmart) so we didn't want to pass that up because my husband actually has the time off to enjoy a late night of beer drinking. I took advantage of the sale ad page that has the buy $20 worth and get $10 back. I bought the bottle of Zyrtec and a Johnson's sleepytime bath wash both with coupons helping to deduct part of the $10 I'd spend after getting $10 in ECBs. I found a Zyrtec coupon for $5 off (I also found a few $2 that I have printed out if you're interested). I had a $1.00 off coupon for the sleepy time Johnson's bath wash. So that's $6 off making it $14 out of pocket and getting $10 of it back in ECBs. I won't go over the entire list of things I bought, but I ended up with a LOT of ECBs.

My fourth transaction, I bought 6 bottles of VO5 shampoo (3) and conditioner (3) that were on sale for .75 (which is .04 cheaper than the sale ad) and 2 Kashi rolls (in the health bar section) for $1.00 each. I paired some ECBs with it and ended up only paying .50 out of pocket!

So that's three whole transactions that I paid .77 out of pocket for over $30 of stuff and still walked away with $25.99. I was kind of bummed that they were out of a lot of the things on my list (like the neutrogena wave - which the manager said he hasn't ever seen at the store but might come on the truck today). I feel pretty good with what I did spent already, so I'm just going to leave it at that and not worry about going back for it. That thing is going on sale pretty much everywhere.

Although I'm not a master at this yet, I'm getting there. It's definitely good to walk away with more ECBs than what I started with. It just takes some careful planning of what ECBs you have, what thing you're buying that will print new ECBs, and what things you're buying that won't print ECBs (like the entire VO5 shampoo/conditioner and Kashi rolls transaction).