Frugal Shopping

I have been following a couple of bloggers lately who do a lot of shopping at CVS and Walgreen's. They save a lot of money by shopping there and using the various customer rewards programs offered by the two stores. If you haven't signed up for CVS' Customer ExtraCare reward card you can do that here. It's free and you earn Extra Value Bucks (EVB) on many purchases made throughout the store. These EVB can be used just like regular cash. When used with other coupons and discounts you can purchase many items for deeply discounted prices or FREE!

Walgreen's has a monthly Easy Saver Rebate program you can participate in. They publish a monthly Rebate flyer which you can pick up at the front of the store for Free or view it online and once you've made all your purchases, you complete the form and mail it back to them and they will send you a Walgreen's gift card with all the rebate money you earned on there. This Rebate flyer is also full of coupons which are different from the weekly ads Walgreen's puts out.

I went to CVS last night to pick up a few things we needed and this is how my purchases went (I was very pleased with what I got for my money!):

2 bags of M&M's: 2/$4.00 received 2 EVB
also used coupon $1.00/2 bags so actually paid $1.50 per bag + received 2 EVB

Purchase $10 of these items get $5 EVB
Irish Spring Body Wash 3.99
Softsoap 3.99
Toothpaste 2/5.00
Used 2.00 coupon so paid $11.00 + received $5 EVB

Lysol Neutra Air on sale 2/$5.00 and used coupon Buy one, get one free - register deducted the regular price of $2.99 instead of sale price; Advil was 6.99 and received 2.00 EVB so total price paid for this was $9.00 + received 2.00 EVB

Now I have a total of 9 EVB and I used those on the personal hygiene products which cost 12.58 total so after applying my $9.00 EVB I paid $3.58 cash.

Total cash paid for this trip $26.58

I am pleased with this first trip because had I purchased all of these items at another store I would have paid much more than this. I hope to collect more coupons and refine this "art of frugal" shopping this year.