Shopping at Your Local Drugstore Can Be Good for Your Budget

The corner drugstore can be a godsend when you need your prescription refilled or a box of cold medicine, but did you know it could also be good for your budget? These 2 national pharmacy chains offer programs that can dramatically save you money for your monthly household needs.

Cvs Pharmacy

The first step to saving at CVS is applying for their store loyalty card. The extra care card can be obtained either online via their website or in any CVS store. With this card you can obtain extra care bucks. Extra care bucks are coupons for dollars off your next shopping trip that print at the bottom of your CVS receipts. These are earned 3 different ways.

1. You earn 1 extra care buck for every 2 prescriptions you fill that is not paid for by any government program.

2. You earn 2% on all your purchases, with some exclusion of course, every 3 months. Your purchases for each quarter are tabulated and at the end of the quarter you receive extra care bucks equal to 2 % of those purchases.

3. You also earn extra care bucks by making certain purchases. Check your local CVS flyer in the Sunday paper, and look for that weeks ECB deals. Most will be like purchase 20.00 of a certain brand of product and earn 5 extra care bucks. These can be maximized if you have coupons for the items. The 20.00 purchase is calculated by the shelf price, not your total after coupons. This can be a good way to stock up on things. When you earn extra care bucks in this manner they are printed on the bottom of your receipt 2 days after you make your purchase. These specials vary from week to week and can be a great way to get items cheap or free. Here's an example of how this works. This is an example only, not an actual CVS sale. Prices used are estimates for demonstration only.

The CVS flyer states, "By 15.00 worth of Dove products, earn 5.00 extra care bucks"

You buy the following items,
2 Deodorants shelf price 2 for 5.00
2 Shampoos shelf price 2 for 7.00
2 4pk of bar soap shelf price 2 for 4.00

Your total would be 16.00 and you would qualify for the 5.00 Extra care bucks. Now lets say you have the following coupons to apply to your order. Remember the 15.00 is calculated with the shelf price not with your after coupon price. At the checkout you use the following coupons.
2, deodorant coupons for 1.00 each
Shampoo's buy one get one free
2, 1.00 off bar soap coupons.

Using those coupons brings your total down to 8.50, and with the extra care bucks you earned (remember it will print on your receipt 2 days after the purchase to use on a future trip) you're getting all those bath items for 3.50.

You can see how using these can save you money and help you create a stockpile of items. Best of all since your extra care bucks print on a future receipt you can use them for other ECB deals. Using the example above, if you had an extra care buck from a previous transaction of 5.00 you could have applied it to the above purchased and have paid 3.50 out of pocket plus tax. A lot pf people use the extra care bucks they get to apply them to other extra care deals, to decrease the out of pocket expense.
You can access your extra care card information to track your quarter spending amounts from the CVS website. Be sure to sign up for mailings and special offers from CVS. When CVS issues coupons, you can use the store coupon with a manufacturers coupon for extra savings!

Walgreen's

Walgreen's offers rebates with their monthly Easy Saver catalog. This booklet is available each month at the front of the store. They offer usually 3 or 4 items each month that are free after rebate. In addition the offer money back rebates on another 50 or so items each month. Your easy saver catalog includes Instant Value Coupons (IVC's) your monthly rebate form and several pages of rebate information. To get your rebates you retain your receipts, circle the rebate item, note the rebate number on the receipt and mail it in at the end of the month. Instructions for this are located in the easy saver catalog for easy reference. Your rebates are figured before any coupons you use. So if you buy a free after rebate item and use a coupon, you will get the full price back in rebate and end up with the item better than free.

Walgreen's also allows stacking of its store issued coupons with a manufacturers coupon. Walgreen's has 2 types of store issued coupons: The instant value coupon and the Walgreen's weekly ad coupon. The instant value coupons are available in the easy saver booklet, and the ad coupons are in your weekly Walgreen's ad and they are available for that week only.

When you are ready to mail in your rebate at the end of the month you can check a box on your form and elect to receive your rebate in the form of a Walgreen's gift card. I recommend this because future rebates that you can have applied to the card will be fulfilled more quickly than waiting for a check, and they give you a 10% bonus for every month you use the gift card as your rebate. Here's an example of a past deal I took advantage of and ended up with enough almost free shampoo to last for months!

Rebate offer was 10.00 gift card for every 20.00 purchase of this certain shampoo brand. I bought enough shampoo and conditioner to reach the 20.00 mark. I had buy one get one free coupons I used and my total was 10.33. After the gift card rebate I got all my shampoo and conditioners for a total of .33!

Shopping this way is a great way to save money and to build a stockpile of your favorite products. I have also found that shopping at these smaller stores has limited my impulse purchases that I always had when shopping for these everyday items at the large discount stores. Anyway you look at it shopping at your local drugstore is definitely smart for you budget.