How to Get the Most for Your Money at CVS

CVS has an ExtraCare card program, which is a great program for saving money and earning a little "ECB's" in your pocket at the same time. First off, the Extracare program is just like any other loyalty shopper program, you sign up for your card and have them scan it every time you go to the store. Discount will come off automatically onyour purchase, the extra benefit of already getting the Extracare Card discount is that you also get coupons back and ECB's on some products (Extra Care Bucks). You will earn 2% back on all purchases in the store, so you spend $10 on your shopping visit, you will get back .20 cents. Which does not sound like much, but every 3 months the money you got back is totaled up and you receive an ECB for the amount. The ECB is basically a paper receipt that can be used like cash in any CVS, you MUST have your Extra Care Card however to use the ECB's, you can not take someone elses ECB's and match them up to your ECB's, the numbers on the card and receipt need to match. You can use your ECB for anything in the store minus a few typical restrictions, like liquor, lotto, prescriptions, etc. ECB's do have an expiration date so you need to keep an eye on that also.

The big way to make money using ECB's is to track the CVS sales and find the products that will be free AFTER ECB's. For example, say toothpaste (or shampoo or soap ro any of the other products CVS sells) is on sale for $2 and you get $2 ECB's back. You will pay with cash out of pocket $2, but get the ECB (the paper receipt that is almost like cash at CVS) to spend somewhere else in the store, so you get the toothpaste you were going to buy anyway and can go buy something else in the store with your 2$. CVS also allows "rolling" of the ECB's to a certain point. The toothpaste may be on sale and the flyer states limit 2. The limit is not on how many you buy at the sale price, you could buy 100 toothpaste all at the sale price but the limit is on ECB's. So you woudl buy your toothpaste and pay $2 cash, get your $2 ECB back, go and buy another of the same toothpaste with your $2 ECB and get $2 ECB back again, you are at your limit so you can always use the $2 for another tube of toothpaste but you would not get your ECB's, but you would get 3 tubes for $2. You could take the $2 and use it towards another product you need that gives back ECB's also and repeat the deal with that product. Now to make the deal even sweeter, check your Sunday paper or printable coupon websites for a coupon good on the product you are buying, example, Sunday paper has $1 off one tube of the toothpaste CVS has on sale, so I use my $1 coupon, pay $1 out of pocket but get back $2 ECB's, $1 profit!!!

Sounds confusing but really it is not. It does take some time to read though the Sunday flyers and match coupons with sales but worth it when you have a stockpile of toothpaste, shampoo and the other products you can get for free or nearly free! Once you start doing the ECB deals though you get the hang of it very qui9ckly and there are plenty of websites dedicated to couponing that will lay out the sales and coupon matchups for you!