Welcome, my fellow Walgreens fans! It’s Sunday, time for our weekly Walgreens $5 Challenge. The place to come for simple scenarios with step-by-step instructions.
It is another week of freebies at Wags, so grab your weekly Walgreens ad, a printer, and some scissors to get started.
If you are new to shopping at Walgreens, and wanting to learn the basics, check out this post. New to couponing? Learn the lingo here.
If you are a first time visitor, here’s the lowdown:
Join me each week as I host The Walgreens $5 Challenge!
Seasoned WAGS shoppers: share your best scenario(s) for the upcoming week at Walgreens.
Your budget: $5.00 out-of-pocket cash.
Your mission: to grow that $5.00 into more Register Rewards (RR) to use in upcoming weeks.
Want to participate? Start by reading the rules here.
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Here is MY $5 Scenario for the week of October 3rd:
*coupons in red (scenarios never include tax as this will vary by region)
Transaction #1
Buy 1 Crest Toothpaste @ $1.99
$1.00/1 Crest or Pro Health for Me Toothpaste (PG insert 09/26/10)
Total After Coupon = $0.99
RRs Earned= $1.00
Transaction #2
Buy 1 EOS Lip Balm .25 oz. @ $3.00
Pay with $1.00 RR from above
Total After RRs= $2.00
RRs Earned= $3.00
Transaction #3
Buy 1 Schick Hydro Razor @ $7.99
Buy 1 Nestle Candy (1.2-2.1 oz.) @ $0.29
$4.00/1 Schick Hydro Razor (SS insert 10/03/10)
Pay with $3.00 RR from above
Total After Coupon & RRs= $1.28
RRs Earned= $4.00
Grand Total OOP=$4.27
Total Value= $13.27 with $4.00 Register Rewards remaining!
Keep rolling those RR’s for more savings!
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Let’s see what fabulous scenarios you come up with for $5.00 or less! Simply post your scenarios on your blog, then leave your link below. (If you are reading via email or in a reader please click through to see the Mr. Linky)
Please link directly to your scenarios. Linking back to this meme to share it with others is greatly appreciated!
Don’t have a blog? You can leave a comment with your scenario, too. I invite everyone to participate.
I am new to couponing and I was wondering why in transaction #3 you would buy a candy??
@Nicole Moemai, She’s using the $0.29 candy as a “filler” item. The razor coupon and the Register Reward she’s using add up to two coupons. You can only use as many manufacturer’s coupons as items you buy. If she just bought the razor, she couldn’t use both coupons. Therefore, she added as cheap an item as she could find to be able to use both coupons and get the cheapest price and best value. Other good filler items include the little boxes of jello, single little candies, pack of gum, or for this week, the 25 cent single-serve ActII popcorn.
A word about Register Rewards (RR): although only able to be used at Walgreens, are considered a manufacturers coupon—it says that on the top of them by the expiration date. However, a Walgreens in-ad coupon (say, the 4/$1 popcorn I mentioned, on page 3), does not count toward this coupon total, and does not need to be cut out multiple times if you buy multiples of the item. For example, if you were decided to buy two cans of tuna, and use the $0.79 coupon on page 2 of this week’s ad, it would automatically adjust both tunas down to $0.79 after the cashier rings up the tuna and the coupon. A word of caution—with the in-ad coupons, it may look like you didn’t get the right price. Say that tuna regularly cost $1.29, if you bought two of them it would look something like this:
Chicken of the Sea tuna 5 oz $1.29
Chicken of the Sea tuna 5 oz 1.29
That makes it look like you didn’t get the discounted coupon price, right? But if you look farther down on the receipt, it will read something like this
Chicken of the Sea tuna 5 oz 1.00-WAGC
This means it subtracted a dollar total, 50 cents from each of your tunas. That’s because the sale price of $0.79 is $0.50 less than the $1.29 regular price.
I overanswered your question, sorry if it was confusing, I’ll try to explain further if you’d like. Just adding info that I’d have appreciated as a beginner a few short months ago to the Walgreens deal-finding, couponing game!
oh and… Sorry… can you use more than one of the RR or ECB in one transaction?? like if I had two 2 dollars off could I use them both? or I can only use one at a time?
@Nicole Moemai, Yep you should be able to use as many RRs as you want. You just have to have as many items as your total number of MQs (manufacuter’s coupons). Also, you can’t end up with a negative balance at Walgreens. If you want to buy two $1.99 items andtwo $2 RRs, you can’t. Your total cost is $3.98 before RR, so you can only apply up to that amount in coupons. A good idea would be to add something like the $0.29 filler candy, to get your before-tax total to $4.27. Then you can use your two $2 RR and your before-tax total will be $0.27. A tip about filler items: the cheapest ones I’ve seen are $0.09 pencils and highlighters around back to school time. If you used that in the sample scenario above, your pre-tax total would be $0.07, minimizing your out-of-pocket (OOP) cost. Another thing about RRs: they can’t be applied to taxes, stamps, cigarettes, giftcards, and maybe a few other things I’m forgetting.
It’s fun to get things with overage (using coupons that exceed the value of product you’re buying, aka getting the item for “more than free”) Here’s a real example: a few months back I got Visene eyedrops on sale for $4 that week and used a coupon from the monthly coupon book for $2 off, a coupon from another Walgreens coupon booklet for $2 off–many of these booklets have to do with health issues, a recent one was entitled “Diabetes and You.” Always be on the lookout for these little booklets! The monthly ones should in the front of the store with the weekly ads, and in my experience they work more like MQs than Walgreens weekly in-ad coupons, however I’ve found you can usually stack as many Walgreens coupons as you want- for this scenario, two- one from the monthly booklet, one from the special, health-related booklet. So up to this point, my two $2 off coupons with the $4 price make the drops free! But it gets even better…I used a $1 off manufactuer’s coupon–from one of the inserts in the Sunday newspaper. This means I was at -$1 for the drops! So i just had to make sure I had enough items that I could use my coupons and absorb that extra dollar I “earned” by using all those coupons! The great thing is at the end, another Visene coupon printed out of the Catalina mahcine (same thing that prints the RRs), which enabled me to do this same sweet deal again! This kind of deal feels like hitting the jackpot!
Another great thing is the “toothpaste deals” as I call them where you can make money! If toothpaste is $1.99 and advertised to give you a $2 RR at purchase, making it free after RR, you can use your $1 MQ to effectively make a dollar on it. Your OOP cost will be $1 (2-$1 coupon), but you will be getting $2 RR back! This gets even sweeter when you keep you RR building week after week. After you get the hang of it, you will have enough $ in RR to pay almost nothing out of pocket, but keep being able to get the great RR deals each week, if you play it right!
For me, this week I have $7 RR, one $2 and one $5. I will be buying the $3 eos lip balm, and I could get the $1.99 Crest toothpaste, use a $0.50 coupon I have from the 9/26 P&G insert, buy a can of tuna for $0.79. My total would be $5.28, I’d use my $5 RR, and pay only $0.28 OOP before tax. Then, $1RR and $3RR would print out for me! So I started out with the $5 RR, paid $0.28 OOP, and got $4 RR in return. Then I could use my $1 RR from Crest along with my $2 RR from last week to get the eos again, just paying tax OOP. Not too bad, I think! 🙂
Another thing about RRs:
Say I start out using $3 in cash to pay for my eos lip balm. I go the checkout, purchase it, for the $3 plus tax, then get the $3 RR. If I want to buy another eos lip balm, I can’t turn around and use the RR I just got from eos to buy the same item, or anything else made by eos. It will scan fine, take the $3 off, but the $3 RR you expect to print out again won’t. This is called not being able to “roll” your RRs. If people in the coupon blogging world say a deal is “rolling” then it means you could buy the eos using your previous eos RR and it would spit out the $3 RR. But this is the exception, not the rule.
You have to be especially careful with RR from manufacturers like P&G. You may think you’re safe using the Crest toothpaste RR to purchase Pantene shampoo that’s offering RRs, but alas, since they’re both from P&G, if the Pantene is a RR deal, it won’t print out the RRs. But if the Pantene you’re buying is just on sale, or you’re using other coupons—it’s not related to a RR deal, you’re fine to use it. It will say on the RR which manufacturer it is from, something like “compliments of P&G” on the right side of your RR.
And I am pretty sure you can use multiple ECBs in a transaction. No CVS in my town, unfortunately!
@Brittany B., Thank you so much… I went to 4 different Walgreens this morning and scored quite a bit of stuff… I started off with two 2$ RR so my first transaction was only the tax… .53cents… I payed 14.48 today oop and got over 150. worth of stuff.. Might sound excessive… but I was told to stock up so I can buy when it is on sale again… Plus we are a family of 8 I have 6 kids…. Am I right or was that too much?
@Nicole Moemai, That’s awesome that you were able to get so much stuff for about $15! Some people have the goal of spending the least money oop as possible. This is more how I am–I’m 19 years old, living at home. I personally sometimes try to keep transactions under a dollar or two (which gets easier when you have RRs from previous weeks). I enjoy getting deals on things like gum, candy, the lotions/lip balms (how awesome was the free nivea and eos this week!?!), and I do look out for “practical” stuff so my mom can get the deals on tp, foil, toothpaste, etc. Others like to spend more but are able to “stock up” like you did. $15 dollars is still really reasonable and it’s definitely a great idea for your family as long as (1) you can afford it (2) you can find space to store stuff (creative storage is sometimes a must, but your stockpiles shouldn’t overtake your whole home!) and (3) you’re buying things that you can use. But sometimes I break that last rule if an item is a moneymaker, but not something I use, I go ahead and buy it, and donate it. Last week there was kids cold & cough medicine, $5, then you get $5 RR, and I found a $1.50 coupon on the Internet. I did that deal twice and “made” $3. That was awesome, but we don’t have any kiddos around, so I’m going to find friends or family, or some place where it will be used. I would feel bad about wasting an item, but thankfully there are plenty of people out there who can use it, and hopefully save some money.
@Brittany B., Well I bought 4 of the schick razors… (We really need more) and 13 of the nivea (probably a years worth with our size family) and 5 of the eos. Some popcorn and some lotions. As fillers and some bars of soap I never spent more than 2 at a transaction and I still have 3 RR left over…..I’m just new at this….and trying to get the hang of it….I’ve only been buying papers for the past 3 weeks and I got the toys r us deal last week… Pays 16 bucks (including tax) for 61+ of toys. That I’m saving for christmas… So far I’m oving how much money I’m saving!!
@Brittany
After reading your posts which were full of helpful information I am curious what a MQ is? Also is there a way to get a copy of the Walgreens coupon policy. I tried to look on there website but can’t find it. I would love to have one so I can look at it when I am in store because I keep getting told different things when I try to check out. Also is it normal to spend more when your first starting out until you begin to build up rr
Thank you for the link-up opportunity!!