How to Work it @ Walgreens!

I got a nice comment from Samantha asking about how to play the Walgreens Game. Oh, how I love comments, especially nice ones! So here is what I know:

There are 2 big components to the Walgreens Game -

• FAR (free after rebate) items
• RR (register rewards)

Let's start with FARs since those are easier:

• Every month Walgreens offers a few products that are free after rebate. This means you have to pay for them, enter your receipts online (no stamps!), claim your rebates at the end of the month (you can only do this once, so what until the end) and wait for the money to come back to you. You can find these items in the EasySaver booklets that are always at the front of the store with the weekly ads.
• The great thing about FARs is that you can request your rebate to come back in the form of a gift card and you get a 10% bonus (this pays for tax in my area).

That's all fine and dandy, but nothing so exciting -right?! Here's how to make them work for you.

• Try and buy FARs with a $$ off your purchase coupon. If you had used the recent $5 off a $20 purchase coupon to buy your FARs, then you would have made $5!
• Find Walgreens/manuf. coupons for your FARs. This month you can make money on 3 of the FARs! The Theragram-M has a $4 coupon in the Walgreens' pharmacy coupon flyer. The ecotrin low-strength has a .75 printable here. The Multi-betic multi-vitamins have a $2 coupon here. That is $6.75 plus the 10% you are getting for putting it on a gift card! Just imagine how much if you used one of the $$$ off a purchase coupons and the FAR coupons! Free money and you aren't doing anything bad, just shopping and purchasing the products that the manufacturer wants you to buy.
• Since I am a bit of a shopaholic when it comes to deals, I've found that having a FAR gift card is like my play money. I use my gift card to pay for any oop (out of pocket) from doing the next deal. When my gift card is used up then I can't play anymore until my gift card is filled up again (from the next month's FARs). Helps keep me in check.

On to the RR -

• Register Rewards are like instant rebates that print off the catalina machine (next to the register tape machine, these are skinny and often have red stripes on both sides).
• Every week Walgreens offers some sort of RR deal - you buy these products, you get this RR. Sometimes it's great (like the P&G deal last month), sometimes it's so-so.

How to use RR to your advantage:

• Roll your RRs - use your Register Rewards to buy another deal, so it is less oop for you. The big problem is that Walgreens does not allow you to roll your RRs from a deal to do the same deal again.

Example: Last week, If I bought 2 Dr. Scholl's insoles then I would earn a $10 RR! Wow! So fun! Makes you want to do it again, right? No! If I use that $10 RR to do the same deal, then my new RRs will not print. Instead, use the $10 RR to do a Dove deal or another RR deal. That's what made last month's P&G deal so great. You could earn RRs on P&G products and there were also Venus RRs, Oreo RRs and Zantac RRs. So you could do a transaction to earn P&G RRs and then another transaction to use that RR to buy Zantac and earn RRs from that. Rolling baby!

• Remember that RRs count as coupons - even though they say "Use like cash", they are considered coupons by the register.

1. That means you can't get cash back and you can't pay for tax with them. So, if you have a transaction that is $3.xx after tax, but the subtotal is actually $2.xx, then you can't use a $3 RR to "pay". You need a filler (small item, like clearance items or candy) to get your subtotal to $3+, then put the tax on your FAR gift card.
2. That also means that they can cause you to have too many coupons! Walgreens' registers have this weird thing that you must have more items than coupons. Example: I buy 3 items, 2 of them have coupons, then when you go to "pay" with your RR, the register will beep, you need a filler item in order for the register to accept your RR.

Lastly, this is the order that I give my coupons to the cashier (and I always give one at a time!):

• $$ off of purchase coupon
• Walgreens coupons (from the weekly ad or the EasySaver catalog)
• Manufacturer's coupons
• RRs

Hope this helps and cross your fingers for another good RR week (it's been a while!) If you need some inspiration, check out this post from Jane4Girls$800AnnualBudget.