CVS Trippin' and Great Opportunity (bottom of post)

If you didn't realize this already, my CVS superstar friends, this was a GREAT week for CVS and ECBs. :-) There were tons of "moneymakers" and great deals for rolling your ECBs.

I'll start with my first transaction - which I really only did to turn my $10 ECBs into $14.99 ECBs for the next transaction.


L'oreal $11.99
St. Ives $3.99

coupons:

L'oreal $1.00 (which made them pay me $1.00 to buy it)
St Ives $2.00 (which made them pay me $1.01 to buy it)
$10.00 ECBs

Total out of pocket: $3.46
Received back $14.99

So even thought it seems like I spent $ I netted a $1.53 "profit" (including taxes being taken out). And everyone needs soap...the wrinkles stuff, well, it's never to early to be taking care of your skin!!! :-)

I think this is the part that is hard to wrap your head around, but it makes sense after you've been doing it a while! :-)


SOOO...next transaction:

3 Palmolive dish soap $4.47
3 Kids Listerine $11.97 (anything to make teeth brushing more fun around here!)
1 Garnier shampoo $2.99
BOGO Colgate $2.29 (and I bought 2)

COUPONS:

Palmolive $0.25
Palmolive $0.25
Palmolive $0.25
Listerine $1.00
Listerine $0.50
Listerine $0.50
Colgate $1.50
Colgate $0.75 (could use 2 colgate coupons even though I was getting one for free!!)
ECBs $14.99


Total out of pocket: $2.40
Received back: $14.00 ECBs

What I technically paid for was $0.99 for shampoo, $0.24/each Palmolive, and only $0.49 for 2 of the Listerines (one they paid me a $0.01), and about $0.04 for TWO toothpastes!





So, the grand total for both transactions was $5.86 (savings of $48.88) and I upped my ECBs to $14.00!!!!



Oh, and listen to THIS. I mean, if I had only be a little less impatient to go save $$. I get an email this morning (apparently after leaving the house) for a $5.00 from CVS!!!!!

Are you kidding me...I pretty much could have paid $0.86 for all this stuff!!!!! Well, it expires Sunday, so I'll be looking ahead to see if I should hold on to it, or use on some more great deals that I passed up today. :-)

One more thing. I just wanted to address one of the biggest questions about all of these money saving tips and clipping coupons. I get questions/comments about how much time this takes. Yes, learning it and developing your own system takes time. Learning prices and what's a good deal, tracking sales...it takes time. But not as much as people would expect. It becomes quite fun after a while. And you learn to become efficient. It makes me feel so good to know that I'm doing my part in our family budget and cutting as many corners as possible. Every penny counts these days...we're always looking for a good deal. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that the time learning/clipping/tracking is time well spent. And my kids have gotten involved in it as well. Olivia is a GREAT coupon clipper!!! I want my kids to learn about how money works. I want them to be good stewards with their money! Labor=Value. And I want them to learn to value the things that Robert and I work hard for - and eventually what they work hard for. They've learned to start some of their sentences like, "Do we have any coupons for Chick fil A Mom? Can we eat there today??" I love it!



*** For those who are interested in learning from the person that taught me about saving money, she is doing a one day (FREE) Strategic Shopping Seminar Saturday Nov. 15th. If you would like more info, leave me a comment with your email (I WILL NOT POST COMMENTS WITH EMAIL ADDRESSES IN THEM) and I can forward you the email I received with all the info! When I did it 2 summers ago, it was SO much fun. I want to go again! There is never too much you can learn about saving money!! :-)