Rite-Aid September Single Check Rebate & Out of Pocket Totals

I just thought I'd do a brief post with my Rite-Aid Totals for September.

I just finished counting up all my receipts for the Single Check Rebate period of SEPTEMBER, which ran from August 28th-September 26th.

Here are the results.

Purchased 61 Items.

Value of Items is $281.51.

Spent on Items $78.01...$50 in Gift Cards(free from Rite-Aid) & $28.01 in Cash.

Therefore Out of Pocket is $28.01.

Rebates qualified for is $76.98.

Also qualified for the Gift of Savings Deal at the $20 Gift Card level(on BIL's account).

So I'm OOP $28.01(including tax).

And I'll get back $76.98 CASH & a $20 Gift Card.

That's a PROFIT of $48.97 cash & $20 in Gift Card!

In addition, I sold the diapers I bought for a rebate, netting $15 cash, making my PROFIT $63.97 + the $20 Gift Card.

Once again Rite-Aid proves the old adage, "It takes money to make money" is true.  I spend a little out of my pocket and get it ALL back at the end of the month Plus MORE!

Here's how to use the system to gain the advantage....

*Purchase Single Check Rebate items if the rebate is equal to what you have to pay for it.  Even better, find a coupon to use when you buy the item which makes the item Profitable once the rebate comes.

*Wait for items to go on sale to use coupons. When an item is BUY ONE GET ONE FREE, you can use 2 of the same coupons, thus you get double coupon $ off the first item since the 2nd item is already free.

*Look for clearance items in the store and pair them with coupons currently in circulation.  Sometimes you can find items with monthly rebates on clearance, so this makes your profit on the rebate even better....or if you are trying to get your purchase to the $ amount threshold to use a $X off an $XX purchase Rite-Aid coupon, clearance items that are cheap or free after coupons are great to raise your 'before coupon' total.

*Study the Single Check Rebate flyer each month.  Often there are products that will qualify for more than one rebate deal. This is called double dipping.  Besides individual items with rebates there are Group rebates(where you need to buy $XX worth of stuff or an assortment of items for a Check or a Gift Card) that can contain items that qualify for their own rebate.(IE:This month there is a Scope Mouthwash Rebate for $2 but your Scope purchase also qualifies for a P&G rebate for a $10 Gift Card when you buy $30 of products.)

*Utilize any kind of coupons available to you--manufacturer's coupons, internet printed coupons, Rite-Aid coupons printed in the weekly sales flyers and the Rite-Aid/AdPerks online coupon Program.

Be sure to "stack" or use the Rite-Aid flyer coupons WITH a manufacturer's from the coupon inserts or internet printed coupon for the same item.  You can also stack a manufacturer's coupon with a Rite-Aid/AdPerks coupon.  Doing that increases your savings on the cost of the item.

*Use the internet Money Off when you buy $XXX Rite-Aid coupon offers.  There has been a $5 off a $25 Rite-Aid purchase available online for most of this year.   Group your purchases so that you hit that $25 threshold and there's an additional $5 off your total!  The AdPerks program mentioned above also has a $5 off $20 purchase Rite-Aid coupon available.

*If you have any FREE ITEM coupons sent to your from a manufacturer wait to use these at Rite-Aid when you are trying to 'build' a purchase's total(needing to get to $25 total purchase so you can use a $5 off Rite-Aid coupon).  These FREE ITEM coupons can build your total so you get that additional $5 off your purchase without costing you any additional Out of Pocket in cash.

*Consider transferring prescriptions or having new prescriptions filled at Rite-Aid.  At certain times  in the year Rite-Aid will offer free $25 Gift Cards for new pharmaceutical business.  I have also gotten the gift card offer via letter after I've moved a prescription away from a Rite-Aid pharmacy.  Be sure and read the stipulations/fine print though on the Rite-Aid gift card offers as not every prescription will qualify you for a free gift card.

If you need to have a prescription filled & have to spend that money anyway, why not spend it at Rite-Aid and get a Gift Card as a bonus?  Use the gift card to buy your SCR items and that's more money you aren't shelling out initially to buy SCR items.

The point here is to spend as little as possible to do the Rebates AND to get a bigger rebate/refund than you spend.

So what are my plans for October & this month's SCR?

Check out my post HERE with what I already bought last week.

I'll be posting what deal I'll be doing this week tomorrow.

Sluggy

PS.  The Aveeno snafu is no more.  The rest of the Rebate was credited to my account this morning. ;-)

Rite-Aid 9/20 thru 9/26 Deals What I Bought Today...

Here's my First Transaction for the week....

1 x Huggies Jumbo Pack of Diapers  on sale $11.00
1 x Proantinox  on sale $6.99
2 x Centra Vite Rite-Aid Vitamins on sale BOGO $7.99
2 x Reese's PB Cups @ 88¢=$1.76
SubTotal  $27.74

Coupons Used
1 x $5/$25 Purchase Rite-Aid Q=$5.00
1 x $3/1 Huggies IP Q=$3.00
1 x $2/1 Rite-Aid AdPerks Q=$2.00
1 x $3/1 Proantinox Rite-Aid AdPerks Q=$3.00
1 x FREE ITEM Rite-Aid Centra Vite Vitamins(from Oral Care Coupon Booklet SCR Offer)=$7.99
1 x BOGO Reese's PB Cups=$.88(was suppose to be a limit of .79 but the cashier rang up for .88 off)
Coupons Total  $21.87
No tax
$27.74-$21.87=$5.87
$5.77 put on Gift Card=.10¢OOP

I'll get $6.99 for the Proantinox SCR Offer #23 and I have a start on the $10 rebate for SCR Offer #4 Huggies.  I just need to buy 2 more packs of diapers.
And I have spent $69.61 that qualifies for the Gift of Savings Program, so I have earned a $10 certificate and am halfway to the $15 one.  After my next transaction, I'll have less than $4 to spend to qualify for the $20 Gift of Savings Certificate, with about 3 weeks left to get to that $100 mark.

Everything went off without a hitch, except I picked up the DARK CHOCOLATE Reese's Cups.  Those I find out later aren't on sale BOGO, just the regular Reese's cups.....darnit!lol
It made my total .88¢ higher.
Gosh.....I don't know if I can handle this....lol

Transaction #2 for the week coming up tomorrow.
Stay tuned to this Bat Channel....

Sluggy

The Old Coupon Scramble & Rite-Aid Shopping Today

The Newspaper Insert gods have attempted to strike me down again!

You may have seen my post about my plan to get almost FREE Johnson & Johnson Baby Care Products at Rite-Aid this week HERE.

Well, my local newspapers(note, there are TWO! that monkeyed with my plan)had NO Johnson's coupons yesterday.
Zip.
Zilch.
Zero.

But even 2 major news publications can't keep Sluggy from accomplishing her mission!
I needed 10 coupons. I had 1 lone Peelie sitting on my desk.  As #2 son would say, "Sad Face."
So, I had to scramble around town for out-of-town papers. No Philly papers anywhere, at All!
I found the next best bet(the major city paper 1 hr. away)and yes, their coupon inserts had the coupon I needed. But I could only scare up 4 copies of that paper instead of buying my usual local papers.
Still 5 coupons short.
And I really didn't want to have to resort to eBay or a clipping service buy.

I went online to see if there were any IP Johnson's coupons I hadn't gotten my limit of or that had been reset. I finally found a couple of the multiple coupons(the $ off of 2 or 3 items ones)that I could print.

So with some hustling around, I got the tools needed for the job.
Geez, this shouldn't have to be so hard, yah think?

Let the Plundering Begin.....

 

They had the CankerMelts so I used the FREE ITEM Q and bought this...

7 x Assorted Johnson's Baby products on sale @$2.99=$20.93

1 x Canker Melts on sale @ $4.99=$4.99

Subtotal  $25.92

Coupons Used...

$5/$25 Rite-Aid purchase=$5.00

4 x $1/1 Peelies on Bottles=$4.00

1 x $3/3 IP Q=$3.00

1 x FREE ITEM Q for Canker Melts=$4.99

Coupon Total  $16.99

$25.92-$16.99=$8.93+ tax $1.02=$9.95 OOP
This was put on a Rite-Aid Gift Card earned from one of last month's SCR offers, so ZERO OOP.

I plan on buying 3 more Johnson's Baby products this week and submitting for Offer #43 to receive a $10 rebate.
The good news was that I found some bottles of Johnson's products with $1 off Peelies on them, so I didn't have to sweat having enough coupons after all!  Plus I found some bottles of the Baby Shampoo with bonus Baby Wash samples on them....bonus score!

In case your area didn't get the $1/1 Johnson's products coupon either, here are some bricks links to print the coupons online....

$1/1 Bubble Bath & Wash

$1/1 Baby Lotion

$1/1 Baby Shampoo

$2/2 Desitin or Johnson's Baby products

$3/3 Johnson's Baby products

$1/1 Baby Powder

$1/1 Head to Toe Wash

These links should work if you are running IE. If you are browsing in Firefox like me, you'll probably have to change the "wi" in the url to "wg" to get the links to work properly for you. You know what I mean.....when you click on the link and it just goes into 'PLEASE WAIT Hell' for hours and prints nothing.

Enjoy!

Sluggy

My KMart Fun during Double Coupons Week 8/16-8/22

I think I showed remarkable restraint this round at KMart during their Double Coupons Promotion that happened last week.

I only made 12 trips there. Ok, 12 transactions, not trips.
It was 7 Trips. 1 trip a day except for Tuesday and Friday.
No trips on Tuesday and 2 trips on Friday.
I have to go by there anyway, so why not stop when I have the time and do a little Free Shopping. ;-)

And because of the $3 off $20 and $5 off $25 coupons that the cash registers were spitting out, I didn't do $50+ on each transaction like I usually do. So in all, I bought a whole lot LESS than usual.
Here are the pictures of everything I bought.

First the food & drink......#2 son is ecstatic about the 5 Bazillion Amp energy drinks!lol

Here's a sneaky trick. See the bags of LifeSavers? Each one has a game piece and a $1 off Coupon inside the bag. Everytime KMart has Double Coupons I use 4 coupons from previous bags to buy 4 more bags....$1 coupon doubled=free bag of Lifesavers. I open the new bags and fish out the game piece/coupons and buy 4 more bags for free. Keep rolling those coupons each trip to KMart. As of now, I have about 50 bags of LifeSavers-not counting the ones we've eaten(that's $89.50 worth) and I'm only out $7.16 for the 1st 4 bags I bought back in April. Well, I got 1 bag with No Game Piece/Coupon this go round, so I am down to rolling 3 coupons per transaction.*sigh* lol

Then the Toiletries....I think #2 son absconded with a can of Tag because I know I had gotten 3.hmmmm....


Then the Cleaning, Laundry, Paper Products(yes, those are paper plates-eek!), Stationery Supplies, Batteries(for my camera and mouse)....

And a photo of assorted things I forgot to put in the other photos....ok, things in bags I found later...lol.....
Add to all that...
2 12-packs of soda
4 22lb. bags of dog food
1 loaf of bread
1 Microwave Hormel Meal thing
6 more bags of Lifesavers
1 Purse that was on clearance(yes, I succumbed to a cheap new purse)

Value of Items is $585.50.
Total spent $16.86 OOP.
Savings of 97%!
AND I got 2 FREE Movie Tickets for buying the Axe Products & I'll get a $5 Gift Card for buying the 4 Boxes of Kellogg's Cereal.

Now, I don't buy ONLY items that are free or almost free during the KMart Double Coupons Event. I use free or cheap as a guideline but I'll spend a bit more to get something that is a good deal (but not free or under $1)that we need.
For example, Purina Dog Chow was on sale for $10.99 for a 22lb. bag this past week.
A good price.
I had $2 coupons that doubled, giving me $4 off per bag. If I bought the Dog Food along with other items that were free with coupons, I could then use the $3 or $5 off your order KMart coupon toward lowering the Dog Food even more.....so, the $10.99 dog food becomes $7.99 with coupon and then $4.99 OR $2.99 with the $ off your order coupon when you spend XX$. Paying $5 or $3 for a big bag of dog food is amazing good!

Even with doubled Coupons, because of the sometimes ridiculously HIGH regular retail prices at KMart, I couldn't get a savings percentage this high(97%)....unless I pulled out my secret weapon when doing KMart Double Coupon shopping.

That secret weapon is.....Pharmacy Gift Cards!

When my KMart Double Coupon Week gets near, I go and transfer our prescriptions that need refilling to the KMart Pharmacy. KMart regularly puts out Reward Coupons that give you between a $10 & $25 Gift Card for each prescription you move to their Pharmacy.

With our Prescription Plan it really doesn't matter which Drug Store fills our meds....we get charged the same price. So having KMart fill them is the same as having Rite-Aid, Walmart, Target, etc. fill them. I am out the same amount no matter where, so I might as well get a perk(gift card)since I am going to have to spend the money anyway, right?

I was able to move 3 prescriptions for a total of $58.80 in Gift Cards.
$58.80 of free money to spend. Combine sales and doubled coupons with the Gift Cards and you can see how much you can get for ZERO out of your own pocket!

Next refill, I'll move them all back to where they were filled before or to a different Pharmacy if they lure me there with more Gift Cards.
2 months later, I can move them back to KMart for more Gift Cards to spend during a future Double Coupons Week.

So how did you do this past week? Did you score some amazing deals??
What's on your deal hunting agenda this week?

Sluggy

The Mother of All Shopping Trips....in the last few Months at least

I got wind a couple of weeks ago, of a great Shopportunity coming up at the Acme chain of Grocery Stores.

This was a joint Unilever/General Mills Promotional deal that ran for 2 weeks at the SuperValu owned chains of grocery stores(Acme, Albertson's, etc.), from Aug.2-Aug. 13th. When you bought $30 in select Unilever &/or General Mills items, you received $15 in Catalina Coupons at the register. That $30 was based on REGULAR SHELF PRICE. Many of the items that qualified during the 1st week of the Promotion were ON SALE. Plus, many coupons were floating around both in the Sunday inserts & online printables to pair with the sale prices and the Catalina rewards.

I was able to scoot down to the "Land of Acmes" outside of Philly for 2 days during the 1st week of the sale.
You can check out my post HERE with the details of the Rewards for the Promotion and a list of what I bought the 1st day I shopped the sale.

I finally got 'most' of the food I bought(except for the refrigerated products)onto my dining room table(note-table with BOTH leaves in it!) and took a couple of pictures before it collapsed into a heap from the weight of all that stuff!lol
Here are 3 photos.

Pictured is all the food I bought--except for....
4x 12-packs of Snapple Tea
8x 1/2 Gallons of Milk
4x 4-packs of Yogurt
2 lbs. of grapes
1 loaf of bread
1 single serve cup of Ben & Jerry's(that never made it home!lol)
2x Milkbones boxes
1x Chex Mix
4 bags of Lay's Chips
2 Bags of Bugles


Here are 2 close-ups of everything from the 1st photo.



And here is a photo of all the Toiletries/Cleaning Supplies I got. Everything is here except for 3 large Dove Shampoos that I had already taken upstairs.


Here's the list of everything I bought.

8 BC Cake Mix
1 BC Warm Delights Snack Cake
15 boxes Nutri-Grain Bars
2 Nature Valley Nut Clusters
30 boxes Pop-Tarts
8 BC Brownie Mix
7 BC Frosting
32 Skippy Peanut Butter
19 Assorted GM Cereals(HN CHeerios, Kix, Honey Kix, Cookie Crisp, Cinnamon Toast Crunch)
4 boxes Lipton Tea
4 BC Cookie Mix
9 Wishbone Dressing
10 Hellman's Mayo
10 Lipton Dry Soup Mix
2 boxes of Chex Mix Bars
1 box of Fiber One Cereal Bars
4 boxes of Bisquick Mix
3 Chicken Helper
2 Macaroni Grill Dinner Kits
6 Ragu Pasta Sauces
5 Chex Mix
4 Bugles Snacks
1 Sobe Drink Bottle
2 6-pack of Soda
4 Cases of Snapple Tea
8 1/2 Gallons of Over the Moon Milk
4 4-packs of Yogurt
2 lbs. of grape
1 loaf of bread
1 single serve cup of Ben & Jerry's
2 boxes of Milkbones
12 Q-Tips
2 Suave Body Wash
3 Degree Deodorant
2 Degree Body Mist
4 Vaseline Lotion
10 Dove Ultimate Deodorant
2 Dove Body Mist
2 Degree Men's Deodorant
16 All Laundry Detergent
8 Dove Shampoo(large size)

That's 271 Items in 10 hours of shopping.
That's 11 Transactions that contained 26 orders of $30 or more.
The first order(a triple order) cost me OOP $58.81.
The total for all orders after that was $13.24OOP.
A Total OOP of $72.05 including tax for everything.

I earned $15 in Catalinas for each of the 26 $30 orders. 26x$15=$390.
I also earned an additional $12 in Cats for 4 of those orders(double dipping or overlapping deals). 4x$12=$48
And for every 2 Skippy Natural PBs purchased I received a $1 Cat. 32 jars divided by 2=16x$1=$16.
TOTAL Catalinas earned $454.

I spent $330 Cats over the course of the trips(most of them on items that were NOT part of the Promo like the Pop-Tarts, Milk, Nutri-Grain Bar, etc), so I have $124 Cats left to spend when I go back to Acme next week.
(Well I WILL have that much once I get the $15 from Catalina Marketing that didn't print due to an item not being programmed into the computer for this sale AND the $45 in Cats that were STOLEN from me by the Customer Service Person in the Horsham PA store.)

With Coupons and Catalinas spent I SAVED a Total of $942.86.
The Value of everything I purchased comes to....
$1014.91.
A savings of 93%.

Just imagine how much I could have carted home if I didn't live 2 hours away and I had a full week down there to hit the stores?
I would need to buy a second home to hold it all.lol

This haul should keep the kids in Junk Food around here at least through the end of the year and still leave me plenty to send to #1 son at college in care packages.

Let me just state for the record that YES!....there is such a thing as TOO MANY POP-TARTS!

Sluggy