I got a big surprise on Saturday night when I found out that CVS was starting most of their Black Friday Sale on Sunday instead of Thanksgiving night like last year(Click HERE to see my deals from last year). I was very excited with what I got! So excited, in fact, that I went to two stores.
HOW TO QUICKLY AND EASILY SET UP YOUR TRANSACTIONS TO SAVE THE MOST MONEY-
I’m not going to list out how I did my individual transactions, because it would take forever and it wouldn’t help you anyway. Each store will have slightly different items in stock so planning transactions ahead of time would just be a waste of time. There is however a quick and painless method for setting up your transactions in the store so that you save the most money.
1. Go through the store and collect all of the items you wish to purchase (most stores have many items gathered in the front so check there first so you don’t run through the store if you don’t have to)
2. Gather the items that you are getting free/almost free after coupons but will receive back a profit of ECBs (store dollars). For example, the command hooks are $1 and there is a $1 off coupon so the item will be free but you will still receive $1 ECBs. Starbucks Refreshers, Glade Plugins Scented Oil Warmer, and Children’s Advil all have deals where you will receive a nice profit in ECBs. This will be your first transaction. For this first transaction you will pay very little out of pocket and you will receive your profit in ECBs.
Note- If you don’t have coupons for any of the items just start by buying around $6 or $9 worth of items depending on how many transactions you want to do.
3. See how many ECBs you now have. For Example you may now have $9 in ECBs so put your items into groups of $9 and then pay for each transaction with the ECBs from the previous transaction. This is called rolling ECBs. It will keep your out of pocket costs as low as possible. Some of my transactions today were free, most were paid with coin change.
4. Buy the higher priced items first until you are left with all of the dollar items. These are the easiest to break into transactions.
Store One-
Spent- $7.47
Saved- $49.17
ECBs (CVS store dollars) left over- $9.50
That’s Like getting paid $2 to buy all of this stuff!
# of Transactions- 5
Store Two-
Spent- $2.45
Saved- $49.68
ECBs (CVS store dollars) left over- $7
That’s Like getting paid $4.50 to buy all of this stuff!
# of Transactions- 6
The Carmex, Somnapure and Command items all came with additional coupons so take a look because you might be able to use these.
If you didn’t make it in time to score a deal you really wanted don’t worry. Unlike last year, CVS is issuing rain checks for items they are out of. Remember these never expire so if there is something you think you might use it can’t hurt to ask. They know people are going to ask for these so in some cases they have them pre-written.
If you would like to see the coupon match ups for these deals and other Southernsavers.com and Couponaholic.net both did a great job of putting lists together.
I had recently gone shopping at Kohl’s with my mother and sister and I was surprised to receive $10 Kohl’s cash with my purchase. That’s $10 I can spend at Kohl’s at a later date. I had almost completely forgot about it (which is probably what they hope will happen) when my sister reminded me to spend mine before it expires. So on the last day I had before my coupon expired, I went to the store. I couldn’t find any clothing I wanted and didn’t honestly feel like shopping (yes it actually happens!). Then it occurred to me that I wanted some nice towels for our guest bathroom when we have company over. The towels I bought from Walmart when we moved in for $2 looked worn after the first time I washed them.
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