How to Shop at Walgreens

I ran the Des Moines Half Marathon this morning...a pretty fast one at that. It was a beautiful morning to run and was a good race. After feasting on waffles, I couldn't wait to get home and check out the Sunday paper...specifically the Walgreens Ad. Am I out of my mind?

Shopping at Walgreens has become a game and almost mini obsession with me. There is untapped potential there for wonderful deals. Up until the last few months, Walgreens has always been a place to refill my prescriptions and now it is the place to go to pick up free and almost free items. It really is kind of like a game and something I didn't really get until my friend Wendy introduced it to me. I admit, it does help that a Walgreens is one mile from our house which is almost too conveinent, but this is something that is worth looking into...

It was kind of confusing at first and I am still not a pro like others out there, but I just get what I need or plan on donating and feel good about saving some money.

Here is a good site I found with a great Walgreens 101 tutorial. Here it is...thanks to MoneySavingMom.

Walgreens 101

Besides just the normal store sale, Walgreens has three different types of deals to take advantage of:

1) Rebate Booklet - This is most commonly known to most deal shoppers: The Walgreens EasySaver catalog. These are usually located next to the weekly store flier displays at your local store. You'll want to make sure and grab one on your next shopping trip. Actually, grab three or four while you're at it (I'll tell you why in a minute).

The monthly EasySaver catalog usually includes a few free after rebate items for the month and also a number of other rebates they are offering for the month. Some of the items listed in the booklet which are not free after rebate at their normal price will usually go on sale one week during the month and will then be free after rebate at the sale price.

In order to take advantage of the rebate deals, you'll need to go to the store and buy the items listed, paying out of pocket. Then, you'll fill out the simple rebate form and send it in along with your receipt with the price you paid circled.

You can choose to have the rebate sent back to you in the form of a check or a gift card. Unless you are not planning on shopping at Walgreens more than one time, you should always choose to have your rebate put on a gift card. Why? Well, for one, you get 10% extra for choosing a gift card so this will usually cover the cost of the stamp to send in the rebate, plus any tax you paid on the items.

Best of all, once you've sent in your first rebate request and gotten your gift card with the rebate plus 10% on it back, you will never need to spend a penny more out of pocket at the store! You can just use your gift card to buy the rebate items, send in your rebate form and they'll recharge your gift card with the rebate amount plus 10% and you can roll it over and over month after month.

It usually takes around 4-6 weeks for your first rebate to be processed and for you to receive your gift card. Once you have the gift card and just need them to recharge it, it normally takes 2-3 weeks. They'll send you a postcard saying your rebate $$ have been added to your gift card. You can also always log in to their website at any time to check on the status of your rebate.

In order to take advantage of the other great deals at Walgreens, you want to try - as much as possible - to "grow" your dollar amount on your gift card. How do you do that? The best way is to use a manufacturer's coupon on the free after rebate items. Using coupons, plus the 10% you get back each month, you'll slowly be able to grow your gift card to where you can do the rebates every month, plus take advantage of some of the other Walgreens deals, and never pay a penny out of pocket except for the initial money you paid the first time you bought the rebate items.

The EasySaver catalog also includes a number of store coupons which are good all month (see next point). You can see the October Easy Saver catalog here.

2) Coupon Stacking - The EasySaver catalog and the weekly store fliers always include a number of store coupons which are good all month or all week, depending upon which flier they came from.

Since these are store coupons, they can be stacked with manufacturer's coupons. Often, you'll be able to get a really great deal by stacking a store coupon, a manufacturer's coupon, and a store sale.

This is the reason I told you to grab more than one of the EasySaver booklets. You'll want to have extras of these when you plan your shopping trips. That way, you can plan out your transactions and put all of the coupons you'll need for each in an envelope along with your shopping list.

3) Register Rewards - The Register Rewards program is a brand-new program that Walgreens has recently started. Similar to the CVS Extra Care Bucks Program, when you buy a certain item, you will get a printed coupon after you checkout called "Register Rewards" which you can use like cash on your next purchase. They usually only have a few of these items per week, and many times it is not completely free. However, by adding on a store coupon and/or a manufacturer's coupon, you are often able to get the item for free or almost free after the Register Rewards.

Unlike CVS, the Register Rewards (RR) are not tied to a store card. Instead, they just print out for everyone who buys that particular item or items that week. Because of this, there is no limit on how many of one deal you can do. That said, they have recently tightened their system so that you usually cannot roll the same RR over and over again on the same deal.

For instance, a few weeks back, they were running a Proctor and Gamble Buy $25, Get $10 in RR promotion and they were also running a Unilever Buy $20, Get $10. With store coupons, manufacturer's coupons, and the Register Rewards, I was getting most of these items for almost free (and paying with the out-of-pocket from my gift card, of course!). However, I couldn't do the P&G deal over and over using the $10 RR to pay for my transaction after coupons, since the computer is programmed to not print out another $10 RR on P&G products if I paid for with the $10 RR I got from purchasing them last time. Make sense?

So, you can either just do the deals once, or you can do the deals multiple times and pay out of pocket and then save the RR's you collect each time and use them on groceries or other items later. Or, your best option is to do what I did: Do multiple transactions and alternate between the P&G deal and the Unilever deal. This way, you can keep rolling the RR's over and over and paying very little out of pocket (well, out of your gift card!).