Oh CVS how I love thee

I heart Huckabees  CVS

Unlike Walmart which I do NOT heart CVS is really the apple of my couponing eye. It's easy and friendly to coupon at and the staff is friendly and the store is well stocked and red very very very red.

There are three things that makes CVS my first choice in stores to coupon at and the one I recommend that people learn to coupon at first. The Extra Care Rewards Bucks, the Green Bag Tag and the "Magic Coupon Machine."

Extra Care Bucks are store credit that you can earn on certain deals to make the actual cost of the item lower or even free. ECB's as the are commonly called can be used on basically anything thing in the store except booze, pills and ciggies. The are tied into your CVS Extra Care card so your going to need one in order to earn and spend them.

If you've never shopped at CVS before the FIRST you need to get is a CVS Extra Care rewards card. You can pick them up in person from the store or they will actually mail them to you if you register online ( you can print out a temporary card )

Now you can just march yourself into the store and just start saving OR you can take your card and log onto CVS.com and register your card and sign up for Email Savings and CVS will send you a $4 off your $20 purchase. Also go to the "Moneytrashers Pledge' site to earn $2 free ECB to spend on your next purchase.

Ok so now your in the store the first thing you want to do is scan you CVS at the big red kiosk aka the MAGIC COUPON MACHINE. It looks like a price scanner which is what it doubles as. You scan your card or key fob and coupons will print out the side. Don't just scan it once, scan it until it tells you no more coupons. Sometimes the coupons are coupons you can "stack" or use at the same time as another manufacturers coupon or a coupon for x amount off your next purchase. But the BEST coupons are for free times. The free coupons that have printed out in the last few weeks: ALL kinds of candy, band aids, body wash, Advil and cookies.

Ok you've scanned your card and got your coupons and maybe scored a CVS coupon for something free. Whats next? Well your next move will depend on whats on sale that week. Something I recommend planning ahead but your awesome and you can do ok doing it on the fly. Some deals you don't even NEED coupons for.

Here's the deal I did this week:

1 Box of pur-Absorb Iron Supplement $21.99 On Sale for $15.99 Receive $15.99 ECB
4 Bags of M&M's 12oz 2/$5 Buy $10 get $3 ECB

So before coupons the math was something like this

$15.99 + 4($2.50) = $25.99

Now I had a $5 off $25 coupon that I used. You could use your $4/20 that you have in your hot little hand. Remember if you have any coupons that are based on purchase size like $4/20 you want to hand them over first before any other coupons

So that makes my total: $25.99 - $5 = $20.99

Then I handed over my CVS coupons I had 2 0.50c off one bag of M&M's 12oz coupons that I had collected from the magic coupon machine.

$20.99 - 2($0.50) = $19.99

Then finally I handed over 2 coupons I had printed off the internet for $1.50 off 2 bags off M&M's. You can find it here M&M's coupon

$19.99 - 2($1.50) = $16.99

Ok so at this point we are done with all our coupons. Now I had ECB form previous transactions so I used those to "pay" with and only paid for tax in cash. If you didn't have ECB's to spend you'd just pay the old fashioned way. You always have to pay for tax sadly though.

So you give the nice cashier $16.99 + tax and she gives you a receipt and at the bottom you'll see two vouchers. One for $15.99 for the Iron Supplement and the $3 for the M&M's so if you quickly do the math you'll realize you got $18.99 in ECB but only paid $16.99.

They PAID you to shop.

This is a very simple and common transaction at CVS. There is almost always something that is free after ECB or ECB and coupons.