Friday, March 9, 2012

Mommy Therapy: Couponing Makes a Comeback

When you live on a revolving 3 hour cycle, the days start to blend together.

(For those of you without kids, newborns eat every 3 hrs or so. Meaning you start over every 3 hrs.... It's kinda like Groundhog Day, only 21 hours shorter. Bill Murray would barely get to Ned Ryerson on this kind of cycle.)

All that to say, I have had to find something to entertain myself while Baby Girl naps and Little Man runs circles around the house.

Long story short, I have rediscovered couponing in an amazing way.

And here in Georgia, every Sunday they sell double papers for $1 less than the actual price of 2 papers.

I have spent hours clipping coupons and daydreaming over the sale ads....

And I'm here to tell you that the best deals don't happen at Wal-Mart or Target. They happen at CVS. And Walgreens. And sometimes Kroger or Publix. And then, if your Wal-mart price matches (mine in Delaware never would without me going to customer service and who has time for that????) sometimes you can get glowing sale items at Wally World.

For those of you in Delaware, we didn't have CVS's though, so Walgreens/Happy Harry's is where its at. First of all, every month they have an instore coupon book that you can combine with manufacturers coupons. And then, every week, they run sales that give back register rewards. Meaning, I invest $25 I'm the right items and walk out with $10-15 in RR to use next week. And next week, if I shop RR items with coupons, I can walk out having spent little to no money and still have $10-15 for next weeks sale.

The thing to know: walgreens does not provide a personal id card, but rather, gives register rewards to anyone one per transaction. The catch is that they have a 1 coupon per item policy and RR count as coupons. So if you have 10 items, you can only have 10 coupons per transaction. It's a balancing act, so to speak. A challenge, if you will. But its much more complicated than lining up pieces of wood in a straight line so if you can't do that, (I'm looking at you, Alicia and Chelsea) then this might not be for you.... Also, you may have to battle your ethics about buying things you will never use to get register rewards (I find this easier to do if you already have register rewards and won't be paying anything out of pocket).

CVS, on the other hand, is amazing. You do need a savings card, so that means only one deal per person, but the extra care bucks (CVS's version of RR) don't count towards the coupon total. Double them up and its easy to get amazing deals. Double them up in items that you get extra care bucks back on, and you'll be addicted too.

You'll be getting amazing deals every week.

Like this.

You can thank me later...


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