CVS 101 - How to make it work for you!

When I first started out reading "mommy blogs" I learned there were alot of people out there getting ALOT of stuff for free/cheap by shopping at CVS. I didn't know how they were doing it, but Crystal Paine at Money Saving Mom felt my pain (and the pain of hundreds of others) and wrote this tutorial on how to make CVS shopping work for you. I have been shopping at CVS now for awhile using all of her tips and strategies and it has paid off for me big time.

So in an effort to promote our mission of educating Las Vegas on how to save more money, I am posting Crystal's CVS 101 Primer in full. All credit for this post goes to her:

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First off, in order to take advantage of any of the deals at CVS, you need to have a CVS store nearby. Check here to see if that's the case.

If so, you will need to apply for a CVS card. You can do this online or in-store. If you do it in-store, you can begin using your card right away, so this is the best option.

Always have them scan your card before they start ringing up your transaction. All of the deals are tied to your card account number, so if they don’t scan your card, you won’t be able to get any of the deals.

Once you have signed up and received your CVS card, you are ready to do your first CVS transaction. I recommend you start off with only one or two items. Keep it very simple so that you can learn the ropes and gradually branch out into doing more complicated deals.

Almost every week, there are one or two items which are advertised as completely free after ECBs. What this means is that you will buy the item--paying out of pocket for it--and then you will receive a “coupon” at the end of your receipt which will be for the amount of the item purchased. This coupon is called an “Extra Care Buck” (or ECB as we refer to them online). You can use this coupon on your next purchase just like cash, with only a few exceptions (i.e. you can’t buy stamps or gift cards with them--the fine print on the ECB explains a little more in detail).

So to start out, you would check your local ad and find out what product you needed to buy that week which would generate an ECB that was the purchase price you paid. Once you bought the item, you would receive an ECB at the bottom of your receipt which you could use like cash on your next transaction, thus making that item in essence, “free.”

It is not entirely free in that you paid for it out of pocket, however, once you have paid for the item out of pocket and earned an ECB, you can then use that ECB you earned to pay for the next transaction. You want to keep rolling your ECBs over and over and over, so your goal should always be to use the ECBs you earned from your last transaction, to buy something in the next transaction which will earn you the same amount or more ECBs than you spent.

My goal is to spend as little money out of pocket as possible and to roll over my ECBs to be the same amount or more as the ECBs I spent. By doing this, I usually will get $15-$50 worth of groceries and household items normally paying less than $1 out of pocket and earning enough ECBs to go back and do it again the next week.

In some instance, the item you are buying is actually less expensive than the ECB it will generate and thus you will “make money” by buying it. For instance, one week recently, the Adidas deodorant was on sale for $2.49 and generated a $3 ECB. So, even after tax, you "made money" buying it since you got more back in ECBs than you spent out of pocket in the first place. And if you have any coupons (there were $1/1 coupons for this particular deodorant out recently), you will "make even more money."

In this case, you could go in and buy 1 Adidas deodorant that was part of this promotion for $2.49, use a $1/1 coupon, pay only $1.49 out of pocket, and you'd get $3 ECBs back to use on your next purchase! This is what we refer to in coupon-world as a "money-maker".

(Please note: You will not be actually "making money" in that the store will be paying you cash for shopping there, but you will be "making money" in that you will be spending less out of pocket than you get back in ECBs.)

Most of the time, there is a limit on how many of an item you can buy per card which will generate ECBs. Usually it is somewhere between 1-5 and will be stated in small lettering underneath the deal in your ad.

There are weekly deals and monthly deals. The weekly deals are advertised in the weekly fliers and the monthly deals (which are good for the entire month) are advertised in the monthly ECB booklet, which should be available at all stores all month long.

Sometimes, they will advertise a monthly deal in the weekly flier. This is usually just to draw more attention to the deal. However, this does not normally mean the deal can be done both weekly and monthly (doing it twice that month), you can only do it two times, or five times, or whatever number of times the limit is for the month.

Once you have started figuring out the weekly and monthly free-after-ECB deals, you can start moving up to more complicated deals and this is when the fun really begins! Your goal should be to not only roll your ECBs over and over week after week after week, but to "grow" them so you have "overage" to use towards other groceries you need.

How do you "grow" your ECBs? Well, the easiest way is by stacking a manufacturer’s coupon with the free-after-ECB deals.

For instance, if the Adidas deodorant deal mentioned above were going on this week, you could do the deal a total of five times, since that is the limit. You could go in and spend $1.49 out of pocket to get $3 ECBs.

Then, take that $3 ECBs and buy two more deodorants (using 2 $1/1 coupons) so after the coupons, your total would be $3. Use the $3 ECB you just earned on your first transaction to pay for your second transaction, and you'd pay only tax and then have $6 ECBs.

Take the $6 ECBs you just earned and buy 3 more deodorants (using 3 more $1/1 coupons, if you have them), add on another $1.50 item from CVS you can use (toilet paper, etc.), and then pay for your items with the $6 ECB, again only paying tax out of pocket.

You'll leave the store with 5 deodorants, another $1.50 item, and $9 in ECBs to use on your next trip. All for less then $2 out of pocket!

The next step into more complicated transactions is to start stacking CVS coupons and manufacturer’s coupons along with the ECB deals. Once you have shopped at CVS using your card for 4-8 weeks, your receipt will automatically begin printing other CVS coupons. You’ll want to save all of these until they expire and check them against the deals for each week. Since these are store coupons, not manufacturer’s coupons, you can “stack them” (i.e. use them in conjunction with), a manufacturer’s coupon.

To take the example of the Adidas deodorant above: Let’s say my receipt had printed off a coupon for $1 off any Adidas deodorant last week. I could use that on one Adidas deodorant along with a $1/1 manufacturer’s coupon. This would mean that I’m only paying $0.49 for the deodorant (using ECBs I’ve rolled over, of course!) and getting $3 ECB back.

Another way to make your ECBs grow more, is to use $3/$15 or $4/$20 coupons in conjunction with the other deals you are doing. The $3/$15 or $4/20 are coupons which often print at the bottom of your receipt. They are also sometimes available in your newspaper--especially if you live in an area where there is a lot of drug store competition.

For those not familiar with these coupons, a $3/$15 is a coupon which is just that--you get $3 off of a $15 or more purchase. I look at these as "free money", meaning, if I'm going to already be spending $15.50 and after coupons and ECBs be paying basically $0.00 out of pocket in order to generate the same amount of ECBs that I spent, if I stack on a $3/$15 coupon, I can get $3 more worth of groceries without paying anything extra. So, I'll use this extra "money" to buy something that is around $3 and generates more ECB, or I'll use it to pay for something we need that week--say toilet paper or milk, etc. That way, it is lowering my normal grocery bill, without costing me any more.

Provided you have over $15 or $20 worth of products (before coupons, not after coupons), you can stack these coupons on top of any of the previously mentioned deals, too. You will want to make sure and use these coupons first, though, before you give your other coupons to the cashier. Otherwise, the register could have trouble inputting them.

By the way, if you've not done so already, you can also go here and sign up for email offers and you’ll instantly get a $4/$20 coupon. Plus, when you sign up for email offers, they often email you coupons, too!

Oftentimes, there are weekly and monthly deals which generate ECBs, but which are not free after ECBs. These can still be good, so don't overlook them. Paired with a manufacturer's coupon, or CVS coupon, or a $3/$15 coupon, or a mixture of all three, you can often get the item for free or close to free. I don't do this as often as I do the free-after-ECB items, but now that I have a stash of ECBs accumulated, I will often look at these deals and see if I can work one into my weekly shopping trip.

When you are checking out and doing a more complicated transaction, you will want to make sure and have your coupons in good order so that your transaction goes smoothly. The best way I have found to do this, is to always give $3/$15 (etc.) coupons first. Then give any other CVS coupons, then your manufacturer’s coupons. And lastly, give your ECBs. If you have an ECB that is for more than what your total is, they can either manually reduce it down and just take off the amount for your total (and thus you lose the rest of your ECB), or you can add on another small item to make up the difference.

I always bring my calculator and tally up the total after coupons to try and make sure I throw in an extra item or two if I need to. It’s best to go up to the register with a very good idea of how much you are going to be spending anyway, so calculating it up ahead of time is highly recommended.

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