How to Play the Walgreens Game, Even On a Slow Week

• She is like merchant's ships, she bringeth her food (and other things) from afar
• She looketh well to the ways of her household

$.58 OOP

I mentioned earlier in the week that I didn't see too much in the Walgreens weekly ad circular that I was interested in. There was one item I wanted--the small Dawn dishwashing liquid, on sale for $.99 with their in-ad coupon. I had three $.50 coupons from the P&G booklet I got in the mail (This was a Dec/Jan deal--buy $50 of P&G products, send in the register tapes, and get a book of coupons worth $120) making them $.48 each.

First consideration--Walgreens coupon policy is that you can't have more coupons than you have ican stack manufacturer's coupons with their store coupons, you can't have more coupons than you have items--so if I had one WAGs in-ad coupon, plus three manufacturer's coupons, I needed to have at least 4 items, so I needed a small filler. According to a comment I received, the in-ad coupon doesn't count toward the coupon-to-item count

First consideration--I had a $3 Register Reward left from an earlier week that I wanted to use. Register Rewards do count in the Walgreens register as a coupon, and their coupon policy is that you can't have more coupons than you do items. So in any case, with three manufacturer's coupons and a RR, I needed at least 4 items; and if that fourth item was one that I had a coupon for, I would need a 5th.

ThirdSecond consideration--I had to make sure that the merchandise total was at least $3 (or whatever my RR would have been) after coupons, and before tax.

So, armed with my handy dandy coupon binder and a partial plan, I took the aisles of my local Walgreens to see what I could find, bearing in mind that if I used any additional coupons my total number of items would need to go up, I looked at all kinds of things before I decided on these 6 items:

3 Dawn Dishwashing detergent, $1.99, $.99 each with in-ad coupon, less 3 $.50 Qs, or $.48 each

1 box Deerfield Farms dried cranberries, $1 (I love these!)

1 package retractable ball point pens, clearanced to $.50

At this point, I had the right number of items, but my total after coupons would have been only $2.97--not the $3 I needed in order to use my Register Reward. I spotted a box of Triscuits clearanced to $1.09, and started get them instead of the cranberries, but I really, really like the cranberries. Then, I happily spied another small box of crackers, clearanced to $.25, which would bring my total after coupons up without going over too much, and is just the right size to munch on when we're traveling, which we'll be doing next week.

My total before coupons was over $8 with tax, after coupons and register rewards, $.22, total out-of-pocket after tax of $.58! That's a 92% savings! Whoo hoo!

So how are you faring in your Mission Possible tasks this week? See the weekly post below to see how everyone else is saving!

Until next time...