Back Into The CVS Game

You may have noticed that I haven't been CVSing much at all lately. Coincidentally, there's also been a lot of disparaging talk lately on the internet about how CVSing (or playing the game at Walgreens or Rite-Aid, for that matter) aren't worth one's time or can't be used by people seeking healthy products. Check out the comments on this thread for some examples.

I would tend to disagree. In large part, I've cut down because the number of products that we use has really gone down. Toothpaste? Don't use it anymore. Deodorant? Same thing. Body wash? Nope. Lotion? Very little. Even the best deals on those things can't match the ease and frugality of using baking soda for just about everything :) And, we still have a huge stash of all kinds of medicine from back when I had hella surplus in my Flexible Spending Account when I worked at Iowa. (Expiration dates be damned! We use it all and it all works fine.) So I've figured it's probably better to "save 100%" by just staying out of the store! But, I don't think that those conditions apply to most people, even if they do buy the bulk of their groceries at Whole Foods or farmer's markets.

Lately, though, I've been feeling compelled to go back. Yesterday I was driven, out of allergy-induced desperation, to stop in and buy generic Claritin (which, luckily, was at least on sale from $16.49 to $9.99), without a single coupon or ExtraCare Buck to my name. And while I've always known abstractly that I could donate the items we don't use, I actually did it recently (donating our 8 boxes of extra toothpaste and several boxes of tampons, since I've switched to extraordinarily economical and environmentally-friend Keeper Cup) and let me tell you: it makes a difference to actually walk into a local homeless shelter and be personally thanked by the staff and patrons there. Since Matt and I like to give a certain percentage of our income to help people in need, it can be fun to see how incredibly far we can stretch those dollars, which (unlike our own shopping budget) aren't limited by the fact that we don't need diapers or toothpaste or Depends, regardless of how good the deals are.

So, I decided today was the day to get back in the game. I hoped to utilize a number of these deals and pick up some free-after-ECB Listerine, Band-Aids, and baby lotion, along with some cheap (after coupons and ECB) aftershave ($0.59), Q-tips ($1.19 for 500), men's deodorant ($0.19), and Kashi cereal ($0.50 a box!). All things that could be of great help to the homeless or us or both. We went to two CVS's (biking a total of 9 miles, including doing our grocery shopping and hitting Whole Foods and Bloom and Trader Joe's for free samples) and while both were out of the Listerine (that's what I get for shopping the June deals on the 29th of the month!), we did pretty well with the following two transactions:

Transaction 1: Reston CVS
Brut Deodorant x 5 at $3.19 apiece
Johnson's Baby Lotion sample size x 2 at $0.99 apiece

Subtotal: $17.93
Tax: $0.90

Used two $1/1 Johnson's Baby Lotion (any size) which were adjusted to a total of $1.98
Used a gift card with $11.90 (this is where I could have subbed in some ECB, had I been keeping current with CVS)

Paid $4.95 out of pocket and got back $15.00 in ECB's for the Brut.

Transaction 2: Herndon CVS

Kashi Heart-to-Heart Cereal x 2, on sale 2/$5
CVS Bandages, 40-ct, x 2 at 1.99 each
CVS men's aftershave at $3.39 (was marked $2.59 on the shelf but I didn't catch it at the register)
CVS lip balm with SPF (something the shelter had high on their request list) x 2 at 1.99 each
CVS cotton swabs 500 ct x2 at 2.19 each (I think we mistakenly grabbed the "500 for the price of 375" instead of the plain 500-ct which would have generated $2 ECB each...who could have known that?!)
Trident Gum (used as a filler so I could use my $4/$20 coupon) at 1.19

Coupons:
CVS $1/1 CVS Suncare (picked this up on a sunscreen sample at the first CVS and it worked toward the lip balm. I was kicking myself for not having picked up more!)
CVS $2/1 skincare (worked for the aftershave)
Kashi 2- $2/1
CVS $4/$20 for updating my email address

Came to $11.31 out of pocket (which is not the pennies that some people shop for, but it's still a bargain)

Got back $1 and $3.98 in ECB

So even with a couple of slipups on my part, and the stores being out of a couple things, my total was around $16 out of pocket and I got almost $20 back in ECB--not to mention a few things we needed (Q-tips and gum, plus the Kashi which was only $0.50 a box and which I really enjoy) and a boatload of things the shelter needed. They were excited to get them and we were excited to give them! And now that I have a good stash of ECB to get started again, we're planning to play the game pretty assertively now that we have a repository for all of the great deals on stuff we don't need! I wish I'd been able to take a picture of our haul, but we dropped it off at the shelter shortly after we bought it.

All of the coupons I used can be found via links from Moneysaving Mom. We quit getting the Sunday paper, despite the fact that the coupons made up for the cost, both because of our decreased need for packaged products and the fact that we hated the waste it generated in paper when we can just read the news online. Plus, 90% of our grocery shopping is at Trader Joe's, where coupons generally don't apply. BUT, while at the library today, I found out that they just THROW AWAY the coupon inserts that come in the papers that they subscribe to, so I'm hoping to get around the cost and waste issue of subscribing to the newspaper by writing the library a letter and asking them to hold the inserts for me. Here's hoping it works!