First off, in order to take advantage of any of the deals at CVS, you need to have a CVS store nearby.
If so, you will need to apply for a CVS card. You can do this online or in-store. If you do it in-store, you can begin using your card right away. I did mine online and got it in about a week.
Once you have signed up and received your CVS card, you are ready to do your first CVS transaction. I recommend you start off with only one or two items. Keep it very simple so that you can learn the ropes and gradually branch out into doing more complicated deals.
Almost every week, there are one or two items which are advertised (flyer in the Sunday Paper or HERE as heavily discounted and sometimes even free after ECB’s. What this means is that you will buy the item–paying out of pocket for it–and then you will receive a “coupon” at the end of your receipt which will be for the specific amount of ECB’s advertised. This coupon is called an “Extra Care Buck” (ECB). You can use this coupon on your next purchase just like cash, with only a few exceptions (i.e. you can’t buy stamps or gift cards with them–the fine print on the ECB explains a little more in detail).
So to start out, you would check your local ad and find out what product you needed to buy that week that would generate an ECB. Once you bought the item, you would receive an ECB at the bottom of your receipt which you could use like cash on your next transaction, thus making that item “discounted” if not in some cases completely free.
Once you have paid for that first item out of pocket and earned an ECB, you can then use that ECB you earned to pay for the next transaction. You want to keep rolling your ECBs over and over and over, so your goal should always be to use the ECBs you earned from your last transaction, to buy something in the next transaction which will earn you the same amount or more ECBs than you spent.
My goal is to spend as little money out of pocket as possible and to roll over my ECBs to be the same amount or more as the ECBs I spent.
In some instance, the item you are buying is actually less expensive than the ECB it will generate and thus you will “make money” by buying it.
For instance, one week recently, the Adidas deodorant was on sale for $2.49 and generated a $3 ECB. So, even after tax, you “made money” buying it since you got more back in ECBs than you spent out of pocket in the first place. And if you have any coupons (there were $1/1 coupons for this particular deodorant out recently), you will “make even more money.”
In this case, you could go in and buy 1 Adidas deodorant that was part of this promotion for $2.49, use a $1/1 coupon, pay only $1.49 out of pocket, and you’d get $3 ECBs back to use on your next purchase! This is what we refer to in coupon-world as a “money-maker”.
(Please note: You will not be actually “making money” in that the store will be paying you cash for shopping there, but you will be “making money” in that you will be spending less out of pocket than you get back in ECBs.)
Most of the time, there is a limit on how many of an item you can buy per card which will generate ECBs. Usually it is somewhere between 1-5 and will be stated in small lettering underneath the deal in your ad.
Sometimes, they will advertise a monthly deal in the weekly flier. This is usually just to draw more attention to the deal. However, this does not normally mean the deal can be done both weekly and monthly (doing it twice that month), you can only do it two times, or five times, or whatever number of times the limit is for the month.
Once you have started figuring out the weekly and monthly free-after-ECB deals, you can start moving up to more complicated deals and this is when the fun really begins! Your goal should be to not only roll your ECBs over and over week after week after week, but to “grow” them so you have “overage” to use towards other groceries you need.
How do you “grow” your ECBs? Well, the easiest way is by stacking a manufacturer’s coupon with the free-after-ECB deals. This is when keeping your coupons organized comes in handy! Go HERE to see how I do it.
For instance, if the Adidas deodorant deal mentioned above were going on this week, with a limit of 5.
Trip #1 : You could go in with your $1 off 1 and buy 1 deodorant and spend $1.49 out of pocket to get $3 ECBs.
Trip #2: Take that $3 ECBs and buy two more deodorants (using 2 $1/1 coupons) so after the coupons, your total would be $3. Use the $3 ECB you just earned on your first transaction to pay for your second transaction, and you’d pay only tax and then have $6 ECBs.
Trip #3 - Take the $6 ECBs you just earned and buy 3 more deodorants (using 3 more $1/1 coupons, if you have them), add on another $1.50 item from CVS you can use (toilet paper, etc.), and then pay for your items with the $6 ECB, again only paying tax out of pocket.
You’ll leave the store with 5 deodorants, another $1.50 item, and $9 in ECBs to use on your next trip. All for less than $2 out of pocket!
The next step into more complicated transactions is to start stacking CVS coupons and manufacturer’s coupons along with the ECB deals.
There are also In store printable coupons and a savings center in store too. The savings center in store kinda looks like a red ATM, not all stores have them but ask one of the associates if you cannot find it in your local store. You’ll want to print these save all of these until they expire and check them against the deals and your manufacturers coupons for each week. Since these are store coupons, not manufacturer’s coupons, you can “stack them” (i.e. use them in conjunction with), a manufacturer’s coupon.
To take the example of the Adidas deodorant above:
Let’s say my receipt had printed off a coupon for $1 off any Adidas deodorant last week. I could use that on one Adidas deodorant along with a $1/1 manufacturer’s coupon. This would mean that I’m only paying $0.49 for the deodorant and getting $3 ECB back.
Another way to make your ECBs grow, is to use $3 off $15 or $4 off $20 coupons in conjunction with the other deals you are doing. The $3/$15 or $4/20 are coupons which often print at the bottom of your receipt.
They are also sometimes available in your newspaper–especially if you live in an area where there is a lot of drug store competition.
For those not familiar with these coupons, a $3/$15 is a coupon which is just that–you get $3 off of a $15 or more purchase. I look at these as “free money”, meaning, if I’m going to already be spending $15.50 and after coupons and ECBs if I stack on a $3/$15 coupon, my bill will either be reduced by $3 or if I have had enough ECB’s and coupons I can use the $3 to get some groceries that are normally not on sale (milk etc)
Provided you have over $15 (or whatever the amount is worth) of products (before coupons), you can stack these coupons on top of any of the previously mentioned deals, too.
You will want to make sure and use these coupons first.
By the way, if you’ve not done so already, you can also go here and sign up for email offers and you’ll instantly get a $4/$20 coupon. Plus, when you sign up for email offers, they often email you coupons, too!
When you are checking out and doing a more complicated transaction, you will want to make sure and have your coupons in good order so that your transaction goes smoothly.
First - give the cashier your CVS card, then the $3/$15 (etc. if you have them) coupons first, then give any other CVS coupons, then your manufacturer’s coupons, lastly, give your ECBs. This seems to be the easiest way to make sure that you get all of your rewards correctly.
If you have an ECB that is for more than what your total is, they can either manually reduce it down and just take off the amount for your
total (and thus you lose the rest of your ECB), or you can add on another small item to make up the difference.
I always bring my calculator and tally up the total after coupons to try and make sure I throw in an extra item or two if I need to. It’s best to go up to the register with a very good idea of how much you are going to be spending anyway, so calculating it up ahead of time is highly recommended.
This is an example of what I have done over the last two weeks:
Trip # 1
This was a deal that if you spent $25 on P&G (procter & gamble) products you would get $10 ECB & also buy one Playtex 36ct get $2 ECB. Not a great day because I did not have any ECB's to pay the out of pocket but I earned $12 worth (not shown in the picture the print at the end of the receipt)
Puffs Tissue Plain 60ct $1.99 - $1.00 card savings (c/s)= $0.99
Puffs Tissue Aloe Vera 60ct $2.49 - $1.49 (c/s) = $0.99
Playtex Tampons 36 ct $8.49 - $1.50 (c/s) - $2.00 manufacturers coupon (m/c) = $4.99
Charmin 16 ct $15.79 - $5.79 (c/s) = $10.00
Bounty 12ct $15.99 - $2.99 (c/s) - $1.00 (m/c) = $12.00
CVS $4/$20 coupon.
Total before coupons = $31.99 (after c/s)
Coupon Savings = $7.00
Out Of Pocket = $26.39
ECB's Earned = $12.00
Trip # 2
Dawn D/W Hand Care x 3 - $5.07 - $2.16 (c/s) - $1.00 (m/c) - $1.00 (m/c) = $0.91
Bounce D/Sheets 120ct - $7.29 - $1.32 (c/s) - $0.50 (m/c) = $5.47
Gain Laundry Det 100oz x 2 - $29.98 - $8.04 (c/s) - $2.00 (m/c) = $19.97
CVS $5/$30 coupon
Total before coupons = $30.82 (after c/s)
Coupon Savings = $9.50
ECB Spent from previous purchase = $12.00
Out Of Pocket = $10.87
ECB's Earned = $10.00
Pretty simple really!
