Friday was a Good Shopping Day

I love a great deal but I love freebies even more. I scour the sales papers each Sunday looking for good deals or ways for me to get the stuff we use anyway for free. Using coupons can stretch those savings more esp if you have store coupons and manufacturer coupons. CVS and Walgreens do allow both on a purchase. I LOVE CVS and it definitely pays to shop there if you have access to one or more. I also combine trips into one to save even more money but my Walgreens is across the intersection from CVS so it just makes sense to hit them both. I usually shop one day a week and do all the deals.

I printed out my $5/20 purchase coupon for Walgreens and bought the free after rebate items (toothbrush, kids mouthwash, and maxipads) and also bought the 3 boxes of TUFF kitchen trashbags that had the $4 rebate. So my total before coupon was $23.xx -$5 coupon for $18.xx and I'm getting back $15.97 in rebates! I spent $2.xx for all that stuff which was mainly sales tax.

Next I jumped over to CVS and bought the soft drinks on sale (yeah I know even cheaper if you don't buy them but it's a bad vice we have), 6 packs of the store brand toilet paper, and 2 toothbrushes. So total was about $45 with tax before my ECB's (extra care bucks) & coupons and it was $15.xx after all my rewards and coupons. Plus I got $4 in new ECB's so I was quite pleased. We have enough toilet paper stocked up for the rest of year. I also have lots of items stockpiled so we rarely ever run out of items. I get most of these items either FREE or almost FREE! I do take advantage of items that are completely free even if I don't need it then I donate those items either to my church or the local women's shelter. I can't always afford to give charities/organizations cash but I can afford to give them stuff I get free or almost free. They seem to prefer the items over the cash so it's a win/win for both of us. Anyway, I will try to post more about great deals I come across but all of these little things do add up to much bigger savings and allows us to help others. I feel like I'm saving us more money by not working since I have time to do all the shopping, search out the deals, and do the other programs to make money for the extras we enjoy.