First SUCCESS story with Rite Aid

Okay, so Rite Aid is kind of like CVS, because they have the program where you can earn +Up rewards with certain purchases, etc. But, typically I find CVS to be a bit more user friendly, but when I saw how I could stock up on GREAT products before flu season, I couldn't resist! I enlisted the help of a fellow blogger for this success story, and although I had a few changes... I did pretty well!

There were TONS of +Up rewards to be had. I did 3 transactions:

First Transaction:

2 Carefree Pantiliners $2/2 ($1 off Rite aid coupon and 2 $.50 MF) = FREE

Preparation H Totable Wipes $3 (got 3 +Up rewards)

Cloraseptic Spray $3.99 (3 +Up Rewards)

Bayer Asprin $2.99 (2 +Up Rewards)

Comtrex $3.99 (3 +Ups Rewards)

Total OOP $10.54

got $11 back in +UP Rewards

Second Transaction:

Blistex Lip Ointment $1.49 (1.49 +UP Rewards)

Burt's Bees Thorat Drops $1.49 ( 1.49 +Up Rewards)

NeilMed Nasa Mist Spray $5.00 (5 + Up Rewards)

Cepacol Sore Throat Lozenges $2.50 (2.5 +Up Rewards)

Used $11 + UP Rewards from Transaction #1

Total OOP $2.64

got $10.48 in +UP Rewards

Third Transaction:

Hylands Natural Cough and Cold Medicine $5.99 (5 +Up Rewards)

Zabees Natural Child Cough Syrup $5.99 ($5.99 back from online Rite Aid Rebate)

Emergen-C Immune Shots $3.49 ($3.49 back from online Rite Aid Rebate)

Used $10.48 in +Up Rewards from Transaction #2

Total OOP $5.30

got $5.00 in +Up Rewards

Total Full Price cost before coupons/ discounts $68.18

Total Cost OOP $18.48

$5 +Up Rewards from 3rd Transaction

After Rebates $9.48 is Total Cost for everything!!!!

I just realized, they made a mistake and with the first transaction, they forgot to scan 3 +Up rewards into my second Transaction, so they owe me 3 +UPS Rewards! Should have paid $6.48 for everything :).

I think we're good for the flu season, and paid very little OOP!

One of my FAVORITE CVS trips (Love CVS!!)

So, I looked at some of the sales this week, and we had a couple rainchecks, coupons and ECB's (Extra Bucks) towards CVS to use, so I was there at midnight (I know, crazy, BUT WORTH IT!). The total cost of everything before sales was: $33.85 (crazy, right?! Yeah.. that's CVS)... But, we had a raincheck on the Zyrtec for $5.99 with a $5.00 MC and $1 ECB = Free, plus $5.99 back in ECB's. Hershey Bliss, $5.99 = Free with ECB's (from Zyrtec) and got $5.99 back in ECB's. Bounty on sale for $5.99 had a $5.00 coupon towards Bounty and ECB = FREE! Tampax on sale for $3.99, used Coupons and ECB's = FREE with $2.00 back on ECB's. Pepto Bismol on sale for $4.99, used ECB's, paid. .46 out of pocket and received $2.00 in ECB's. So, I saved a total of $33.39 SAVINGS of 99% and only paid $.52 out of pocket, and Received $10 back in ECB's towards my next trip. LOVE IT!!

MADE MONEY AT CVS!!!!!!!!

Actually got PAID to shop today, and ultimately ended up saving 100% and made money too! First completely successful trip where paid little out of pocket and got more ECB's at CVS! And WE USE EVERYTHING I bought!! AWESOME! Spent $38.88 and spent $4.69 out of pocket (after coupons and ECB's) and got $6.00 ECB's back! YEAH!!!!!!!

First of all, we had $2.00 in ECB's (Extra Care Bucks) at CVS from a prior purchase. We had 3 coupons for $1.00 off Ivory Soap, 2 coupons for $5 off John Frieda Products, $1 off any Nabisco package, and 2 $1.00 off Honest Tea.

This week CVS has John Frieda hair products on sale for $5, normally $7.89 each. Got BOTH free after coupons and there was also a promotion where you get 3 ECB's for every $10.00 spent! Final Cost: FREE + $3.00 ECB's!

Ivory Bar Soap is normally $1.99 each. They were on sale $.99 each and I had 3 coupons for $1.00 off. Final Cost: Free + $.03 back!

Honest Tea is normally $1.88 each. Sale was 5/$5. We had the $2 ECB's from previous purchase, and 2 $1.00 of 1 Honest Tea. If you buy 5, you get $1 ECB Back. Final Cost: FREE!

Milk was on Sale and we had a coupon to get $1 off any Nabisco package, so we got the cookies!

Technically spent $38.88, Spent $4.69 out of pocket and received $6 ECB's! SAVED 100% and actually made $1.31 to shop!

I'm excited to share a NEW website!

So, a few days ago, on the news, I heard about a woman who lives in our area named Kathy Spencer. She's an extreme "couponer" in my area. She has a website, www.howtoshopforfree.net which gives some helpful advice. Through it, she had a website listed, www.couponnetwork.com. Coupon Network is AMAZING! Some of the coupons show you how you can earn money back after a purchase! For example, we bought 4 boxes of Post Pebbles (were on sale at Shaws for $2 each) and we got $3 back for our next purchase! It's free to join and you can list your "favorite" store which will show you what deals on groceries are in your area! So, we had a plan to get a good deal at Shaws today!

Knowing about this new website, Coupon Network, is where we started our savings today. We knew that Post Pebbles cereal was on sale this week, 2/ $4, and if you bought 4, you'd get $3 back. Therefore, we bought $8 worth of the cereal with one transaction. After the transaction, there was $3 towards our next purchase. There was a deal for 3/ $6 Sun Chips. We had 3 coupons for $2 off any two Sun Chips. We bought 6 Sun Chips which would have been $12, but with the coupons, it ended up being $6. We also had 5 FREE Sierra Mist with any Sun Chips purchase coupons. The Sun Chips and Sierra Mist coupons were from the Frito Lay newspaper inserts from the newspaper 2 weeks ago. We had a coupon for FREE Uncle Bens Ready Rice. A coupon for 2 FREE jars of Beechnut babyfood and $1 off 6 Beechnut babyfood jars (on sale 55 cents each). FREE Beechnut baby cereal coupon, so got Oatmeal Cereal. FREE Suave professionals coupon. Grand total would have been $60. We paid $14 TOTAL! We Savings 77%! Not bad!! In case you're wondering, our free coupons usually come from Facebook promotions and signing up for certain programs, etc.

Also, I recently started something called SWAGBUCKS. If you join, you do searches (like you would anyways), fill out surveys, do tasks, etc. You earn swagbucks, which you can use to buy neat things, or get prizes, etc. I joined about a month ago and have already earned $15 worth of Amazon.com gift cards. Just sayin!

Yesterday, Nick went to CVS and got pain medication, Tylenol Precise heat pads and Carefree pantiliners FOR FREE! We had a $5 coupon for Tylenol Precise and it was on clearance for around $2. You can use the overage for other purchases, plus we had a CVS coupon for $3 towards ANY pain medication! Savings 100%!!

PetSmart Run

Today Nick went to Petsmart and picked up some stuff with coupons that we had. We had two BOGO for Friskies Treasures (from Coupons.com), 1: Get 2 free Friskies Treasures Coupon, 4: Get 2 Free Fancy Feast Medleys (from Recyclebank.com), and 6 $1 coupons off Temptations Mix-Up Treats (normally $1.75 each) (2 from Coupons.com and 4 from newpaper inserts). Cost for everything would have been about $21. Price we paid was about $5.73! Saved about 73%

Mail Freebies and Trip to Target!

Freebies from the mailbox today included 4 coupons for FREE Fancy Feast Elegant Medleys. Each coupon good for 2 cans up to $1.98. That's a savings of almost $8.00. If you're interested in joining, the coupons came from www.recyclebank.com. It's a site intererested in promoting healthy environmental habits. We also got a FREE Luna bar, Mint Chocolate Chip and a $.50 coupon off of a future Luna bar purchase. Not bad.

Today we went to Target to try to use some of my coupons that have been building up. I didn't do too bad, but didn't do as good as I thought I was going to. Altogether though, I saved 53% off of my purchases! I had a BYGO Reeses cups, but you won't see those shown, because we ate them, ha ha! Both the Nivea Men's body wash was .04 after $3 MC. The Degree were both about $1 after coupons. The Lysol wipes were FREE after $1.50 MC (cost was $1.27). The Aquafresh Xtreme Clean toothpaste was free after coupons since MC didn't specify size ($1) each. The Head and Shoulders Conditioner was free after buying Shampoo ($4.74). Catfood normally $7.99, on sale for $7.49, but we had one MC for $2.00 off and one TC for $2.00 making it $3.49! Lipbalm was already in a bonus pack (one normally cost $2.59) and we had a buy 2 Nivea lip care products get $2.00 off MC making the final cost for each lip balm actually $.79! The pizzas are normally about $6.00 dollars, only paid about $3.00 each with MC and TC. We hardly ever get frozen prepared foods. We had $2.00 Aveeno MC and a $1.00 TC and so we got the Aveeno facewash for about $3.49, normally $6.49.

Before coupons, the cost was about $80, after coupons the cost was about $40. We unfortunately had to get Bissell carpet cleaner, and no coupon for that, so it cost $8.79 and the pretzels $2.69. Overall, not bad.

Just a heads up, we called ahead and spoke to a Manager at Target before going shopping. We confirmed that you can use ONE manufacturer's coupon AND ONE Target coupon PER ITEM! Unless either coupon prohibits it. We did pretty good!!

*Note* MC = Manufacturer Coupons and TC = Target Coupons

Coupons...

So, my newest freebies, Frebreeze was doing a FACEBOOK fan Teacher appreciation contest. For a short time, you could nominate a teacher (Nick nominated the head teacher he works for) and you got a Wood Wick candle and Luminary. One for you and one for the teacher! AWESOME!

Above that is my "gift" from pampers gifts to grow. It's a Gillette Venus Spa Breeze razor, it came with a free sample of Olay body wash AND they threw in an extra razor, not sure why! I've found codes that people have listed on top of getting codes from diapers, and have had enough to get the razor! SWEET!

You will find a lot of FACEBOOK FAN giveaways and contests. This is where I've had almost all my luck! Keep a lookout. I have "befriended" a lot of freebie addicts on FB, they do all the work for me!

I won a COOBIE bra (didn't even know who they were until joining on FB) I simply joined and they randomly selected 1,000 people after they got 20,000 fans. I got free ketchup coupons for joining Heinz, and got free sauce from telling "Country Bob's all Purpose Sauce" what I was having for dinner! Yesterday, Ori-Ida gave away coupons for a free bag Sweet Potatoe Fries to the first 100,000 who signed up!

If you're interested, tomorrow 4/29/11 you can get FREE frito lay coupon when you "like" frito lay and are one of the first 25,000 to get a coupon at 3PM tomorrow afternoon.

Some of my Freebie Friends (sounds funny) on FB are Free4mommies, Freebies, Enza's Bargains, I Love Freebies, ~The Daily Goody Bag~, etc. They do all the work, I just LOOK FOR IT! Ha ha! FOLLOW THEM AND YOU'LL GET AWESOME STUFF TOO!!!!

Onto Coupons....

So, I realized about a month ago, that certain websites for certain stores have their own coupons... Walmart and CVS to name a couple. Did you know that you can usually have ONE manufacturers coupon AND ONE store coupon PER ITEM??!! If you get some high value coupons, you get some GREAT deals! At CVS, I bought some Huggies babywipes with 1 $2.00 store coupon AND 1 $.75 manufacturers coupon.

I've also found that if a coupon exceeds the price of an item (very rare that this will happen), it's a MONEY MAKER! The full price of the coupon is taken off.

If stores have REWARDS programs, USE THEM! Petsmart, Babies R Us, Shaws, Stop and Shop, etc... Can save you money on TOP of using coupons. I still have a lot to learn, but this has been SO helpful to us, as we're just trying to GET BY right now...

Fedex came with my newest SURPRISE!

Today, Fedex showed up with my newest FREE samples! I got a box of Park's & Co.ffee! It came from a promotion I heard about through Facebook. The first response was so overwhelming that they had to postpone the promotion, but it will continue! If you're interested, "like" CoffeeGIANT on facebook and stay tuned. The value of the free coffee is $7.99 and it came in a really cute box. There are nine packets in it, all good for a FULL POT of coffee! We're very excited!

So, keep your eyes peeled and maybe you can get some free coffee too! And if you have a Keurig, it looks like they have GREAT options and variety for coffee, at GREAT prices!

As an FYI, if you're interested in some great coupon sites for printable coupons:

http://www.coupons.com/

Last I checked they had Reach floss coupons $1, that's FREE floss in most stores!

http://www.couponsuzy.com/

http://www.allyou.com/

This is a magazine put out by Walmart and they have some great coupons at times

http://www.smartsource.com/

http://www.aquafresh.com/

You have to sign up, but you get great coupons towards tooth paste, and may just have to pay cents for some toothpaste at Walmart!

My Weekly Freebies!

The Freebies I have gotten from following different people who care about finding freebies and SAVING MONEY!

The upper left picture is from today 4/22/11, I received a FREE sample of Valspar Paint, and got a FREE Origins facewash (by giving an old one to recyce), and FREE samples of Victoria Secret "sparkling and new. forever your angel" scent. LOVE!

Upper right picture: Freebies from 4/18/11, We received FREE Ketchup, Little Swimmers, Nivea body wash, Friskies Cat Food (4 cans), floss AND Tide! Yay!

Lower picture, not everything was free... but I went to Babies R Us, Market Basket, Bath and Body Works, and CVS. Spent about $50, BOUGHT $130 worth of stuff. Proud!

Some of the sites I have used to get my freebies, believe it or not...

Collecting points at http://www.huggies.com/ and http://www.pampers.com/ . I got free diapers from huggies by playing a silly game, and a free razor coming from pampers by adding up points! Great for moms!

http://www.recyclebank.com/ is a place to make earth friendly decisions and committing to healthier living opportunites, etc. This is where we have gotten FREE cat food, believe it or not! About 10 cans free of Friskies and Fancy Feast!

www.ruelala.com/invite/michellem10 . Rue La La is by invitation only, but if you sign up NOW (by 4/25/11) you can get FREE $20 CREDIT, which could lead to FREE STUFF! Just use your credits by 5/25/11. There are great BOUTIQUE items at reduced costs! FUN! And no strings attached!

I'll post more advice soon!

FREE or almost free NIVEA!!

In the paper today 4/17/11, or if you go to http://www.redplum.com/, you will find coupons for $3.oo off of Nivea men body wash, AND Nivea women body wash. These will be FREE products at Walmart (or almost free), most of the prices towards the bodywash is about $3.00 at Walmart. ENJOY! I'm sure the coupons will go quick!

Who doesn't need paper?! How about FREE paper?

Staples is currently having a promotion, buy a package of HP paper (about $5.99) and it's FREE with easy rebate! Unfortunately, the blog isn't letting me post the coupon site... if you're interested, and on facebook, I'll post it on my site. It's a great deal! Hurry, offer ends on April 16th 2011!

"Like" Suave and get a FREE PRODUCT!

If you're on Facebook, if you go to Suave and "Like" their page and are one of the first 200,000 people to enter their contest, you win a FREE PRODUCT COUPON! I was told that I'll get a coupon today, 3/26/11!

Try it!

Low on cash, but want to enjoy going out for dinner?

Another favorite website of mine is called: www.uberi.com. It lists daily deals all over the internet. One of the deals from yesterday was this:

www.restaurant.com is a place where you can purchase gift certificates to eat at certain restaurants in your area. For example, normally you'd purchase a $25 certificate for $10. There is a promotion going on right now. Currently you can purchase a $25 certificate for $2. $2?!!?!? Awesome!

It's going on until 3/27/11. CHECK IT OUT! Some of the offers state you can only use the certificate on certain days of the week and you must spend at least $35.... but that's still a deal!

ENJOY!!

Nick and I plan on enjoying an evening out at some point, and they DON'T EXPIRE!!

BTW, you have to use the code DEAL to get the "deal"

Being a new mom and saving $$

So, recently I became a mom, I reduced hours at work and so money is a bit tight. I thought I would start a blog on saving $$!

What parent of a baby doesn't need diapers?? Couponsuzy.com/ coupons.com currently have Huggies coupons available to print! You can print each coupons twice. There is a $3 off 60 ct or higher and a $2 off Huggies.

Also, I have found great deals on E-Bay! A couple weeks ago I scored 3 packages of Seventh Generation Diapers (Usually around $10 Each) for $17, including Shipping!

Hope this helps some of you today!