I have had a few people lately ask me about how Walgreens works. Walgreens is a great place to get great deals on health & beauty, toiletries, cleaning supplies and many other things. Much of what I have stocked our bathroom closet with has come from Walgreens (Wags for short) and much of it has been free of better then free. Walgreens has changed this month so I will try to explain the basic idea of how Walgreens works and then feel free to ask me any questions that you have.
COUPONS:
Walgreens accepts 2 types of coupons. Store coupons and manufacturers coupons. Store coupons can be found in their weekly ad which comes in the Sunday paper, in the front of the store, or online at Walgreens.com. You can potentially use 2 coupons on the same product. If they have a coupon for an item in their weekly ad you can use that as well as a manufacturers coupon on the same product!
REGISTER REWARDS:
Register rewards are store coupons that print out of a catalina machine next to the registers in all Walgreen's stores. You have probably seen these when you shop at stores like Albertsons and a coupon will print out along with your receipt. It's the same type of machine. The values vary depending upon the promotions going on at the time. Basically you save them to use like cash on your next purchase. For example if you have a $3 Register Reward and you purchase $3.75 worth of products the RR(register reward) will bring your total down to $.75! And sometimes the RRs are what makes an item better then free. For example, sometimes you will see items that are on sale for $4.50 with a $4.50 RR. But there is also a $1 off coupon for that item. So you pay $3.50 out of pocket (OOP) and get back a $4.50 RR making that item a $1 profit!
HERE is a link to a typical weekly Walgreens post showing what I do.
Catalina machines are generally programmed to print one Register Reward coupon for one qualifying item. If you purchase more than one of the same qualifying items per transaction, you will only receive one Register Reward coupon. For example, if your weekly ad shows Colgate Total Toothpaste on sale for $2.50 with a $2.50 Register Reward, making it free, then you only want to by one of this item per transaction. If you bought 2 of these in the same transaction then only one $2.50RR would print out. In order to get more than one Register Reward coupon when purchasing more than one of the same qualifying items, request that the each item be rung up on a separate transaction. If you purchase different qualifying items in the same transaction you will receive one register reward for each item. So for example, if you bought two different items that have a RR you can put those in the same transaction and you will get the RR for both of those items. You just can't do two of the same item in the same transaction to get more then one RR. Most weeks if you check the ad you will see 3 or more items that have RRs.
** One thing to remember, RR coupons expire 2 weeks after they are issued so make sure you spend them before they expire. I usually use the RRs I get one week on the next weeks RR items which is often called "Rolling" your RRs.
Maximize Your Savings:
The best scenario for maximizing your savings is to purchase sale items with a store coupon and a manufacturer's coupons plus a Register Reward. However, Walgreens' registers do not accept more MANUFACTURERS coupons than items. For example, if you buy 4 items and have 4 manufacturers coupons you can't use a RR to pay the remainder on those items because you would be using more coupons then items. The register treats the RR coupon like a manufacturers coupon. The store coupons don't count in the coupon to item ratio so you don't need to worry about that. To get around this, pick up an inexpensive item so that you have more items than coupons and the transaction will be processed. Drastically reduced items and end-of-season deals can often be found on the end of the aisles at Walgreens. By combining items you find at 75 percent or more off with coupons you can maximize your savings. I like to use the clearance items as my "filler" items. I have also found that photos from the photo department make good filler items. A 4x6" photo costs about $.19 with tax so if I need some pictures I just go online, submit them all as seperate orders and then I have a handful of filler items so that I can use my RRs and get something that I need. They often have little candies on clearance, especially after a holiday that make good cheap filler items.
Confused? Too much work?
It probably seems that way now. I know I was so confused when I first started trying to figure out Wags because they do have lots of little rules but after you have done it a few times, and messed up a few times :) you will see that it is worth it and that you can really get some killer deals. It used to seem like my husband was buying deodorant every couple weeks and paying $5 or more for them. Now he has more then a dozen in our bathroom cupboard and I got them all for free. There are so many things that you can get for free or very cheap and once you figure out the system, you will be amazed at how much you can get for very little!
I find it's much easier for me when I plan out my Walgreens trip before I go. Now of course, they don't always have everything I want in stock, especially when it's a free item but if I have a plan then I can get in and out much quicker and I know what to expect and find I get better deals. Many of the blogs in my blog list in the right hand column will post the upcoming weeks Walgreens deals.
Hip2Save is as always, my favorite frugal blog. You can go to her blog, click on the Walgreens link in the right hand column and all the Walgreens posts will come up showing clearance items found, RR deals both advertised and unadvertised and the weekly deals. I plan using that and then know what I am looking for when I get to the store. It does get much easier, I promise and it is SO WORTH IT!
One last piece of advice is to just try it out and find a checker that is coupon friendly that you like and try to go to that checker as often as you can. I find it so much easier when I don't have to worry about getting a checker who is going to look at me like I just pointed a gun at their head for pulling out coupons. :)
Questions? Feel free to ask!
Okay so this picture isn't complete because I am a dummy and left one of my bags at Walgreens this morning. I actually got 4 of the Dry Idea Clinical Strength deodorants, 4 of the C0lgate Visibly White toothpastes and a ton of batteries as filler items. I also got 2 coloring books as bribes to keep my boys good in the store (it worked!) I also don't have all my receipts because many of them are in my bag I forgot so I can't tell you my total savings but I can tell you that I spent nothing OOP (I spent about $23, all on my Walgreens gift card with last months rebates on it). And I got back $27.50 in RRs. So I made money on these items!!
