We love shopping Drug Stores!
We are partial to CVS, but have shopped Walgreens and Rite Aid in the past. The only reason we shop CVS regularly is because the products they typically feature are the same products we use.
We found Walgreens coupon shopping required purchasing many items we just don’t use (think Depends, Homeopath Medicine).
Rite Aid, frankly is too far away.
With that said, Drug Stores are fun to shop. It may take you a while to figure out which store or stores suit your buying habits best.
The first thing you MUST do. Sign up for their rewards programs:
- CVSpharmacy – Go here to sign-up for the extrabucks program
- Walgreens – Go here to sign-up for Walgreens program
- RiteAid – Go here to sign-up for RiteAid’s +Plus up rewards program
The Beginning
In the beginning you need to build up your “reward savings”. Each Drug Store has a name for “rewards”, when you are starting out, you will purchase items that have rewards attached to them. The rewards are for use on a FUTURE purchase, in other words, next week or the week after.
By building up your “reward savings” you will have a bank of cash in hand that you can use next week on items that have rewards attached to them. In this way, you are recycling your rewards week over week.
Understand, in the beginning, you will have to spend money to build up your rewards bank. Be patient, your next purchase will be a lot of fun!
Bankrolling Rewards
Once you have built up your “reward savings” or reward bank, you are ready to roll those savings week over week. As we said in the beginning, we choose to use CVS because the featured reward items match our purchases.
In the past we were able to purchase an entire shop for free, but most times we will wind up spending about $5.00 out of pocket. The result is we spend $5.00 for $50.00 worth of items WE USE regularly!
In conclusion, Drug Stores can be a lot of fun (especially the Magic Machine!), but it does take an initial investment and a dedication to shop them on a schedule to take advantage of their rewards programs and their in-store sale items (think toilet paper).
