May 22, 2008

My frugal trip to Walgreens

Well, I took the dive for the whole Walgreens coupons/rebates thing, and I'm pleased with the results. As I've said before, I don't do "freebies" for things I don't use -- that just seems wasteful to me. I have frequently taken advantage of Walgreens' "free after rebate" products for items we normally buy at full price, but always forget to use my Walgreens' gift card.

Today, armed with coupons from the Walgreens' flyer, manufacturer's coupons and my rebate book, I came home with the following "free" items. Before sale and coupons, total price for the items is $48.91. I used $19.95 in coupons and paid for the rest with my rebate money on the Walgreens gift card. I will add $5.93 back on my gift card for rebates on what I purchased today.

Tomorrow Walgreens has a one-day only $5 off $20 purchase (get the coupon here!). I will be using it to buy $10 ConAgra foods (for which I have several manufacturer's coupons) that offer a $5 rebate, plus I'll purchase a blender (which I decided last week I wanted to buy so we can start making low-cal fruit smoothies this summer) for $12.99 with $3 rebate. That will load another $8.80 (for a total of $14.73) on my gift card for next month's deals.

I will say one of the best things you can do when trying this (which is actually a lot of work and requires some real good organization), is to get the Walgreens rebate book at the first of the month, then hit the Internet for the coupons for items you already purchase. For example, I didn't have a Windex coupon, so I did a google search for "Windex Coupon" and came up with a $1 off coupon to print out. It worked for several items!

If you want more information on how this works, check out MoneySavingMom's detailed explanation.

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