Finish-ed for Another Year

If you have been at this couponing thing for years like I have, you know that every new year, for the last couple of years anyway, brings a Perfect Storm scenario for dishwashing products.
Each January the company that makes Finish products releases a really good manufacturers coupon for their brand.  They do it just once a year so you'd better get it and use it before it expires!

This year, the coupon was $2.15 off 1 package of Finish powerballs, gelpacs or quantums(excluding 10 or 12 ct. packs).  The coupon came in the first set of Sunday paper inserts of the new year on 1/1.

Then CVS drugstores puts this Finish item on sale for $3.50 during the 1/8-1/14 sales week.
Doing the math, each Finish package you buy this week at CVS comes to $1.35 OOP.
Nice, right?

To make this price even more awesome, Finish qualifies as part of the "Spend $30, Get $10 in CVS Cash" Deal CVS has going this week!

So buy 9 packs, spend $31.50, use 9 coupons, get $19.35 off, pay $12.15* and get a $10 CVS gift card.
*Before sales tax if your state charges that.

Ok, so the Finish coupons says limit of 2 coupons per transaction.
So you have to do 2 item transactions to get to the $30 spend threshold to get the $10 gift card....and you have to do this 4.5 times. lol
So you find a cashier who lets you A-buy more than 2 packs in a transaction or B-let's you do 5 tiny transactions one right after another. (Or if there is a line at the register, let's you buy 2 packs and then go to the back of the line and buy 2 more, rinse and repeat until you have purchased 9 and hit the $30 threshold.

Whatever it takes, you can buy 9 packs and get there if you have the patience. ;-)

So on New Year's Day I started going through the 1st batch of coupon inserts for the year, hunting for the good coupons, like the Finish one.
And as is MY LUCK, my region did NOT get any Finish coupons this year!
Ugh.
Ugh.
Ugh.

Did I say Ugh yet?

Then mid week(last week)I saw CVS was putting Finish on sale during the 1/8-1/14 weekly ads and was part of their $30/$10 Deal.
Poop.

So I resorted to a clipping service to get my hands on the $2.15 Finish Qs.  And since it's more cost-effective to get a quantity of Qs from this source, rather than say 9, I sourced 20 of these Qs.

After the Qs arrived on Tuesday, I spent the afternoon/evening(and Daughter hit one up as well for me)visiting 5 different CVS stores in my area, doing lots of little transactions, so as to keep myself within the coupon limits and to keep from taking more than a normal amount of packs from any one store.  Shelf clearers burn my butt......

Let me just add that when you use a clipping service(or a coupon train for that matter), you run the risk of your coupons arriving too late for whatever deal you intend to use them with.  So you need to have a plan B for them just in case.
My coupons didn't arrive until Tuesday(for a sale that started Sunday), so I was 2 days late to the party at CVS.
Luckily for me however, 2 things occured.
1st--my region didn't get the coupon.  Therefore everyone else here didn't buy the Finish at CVS this week or had to mail away for the coupon as well.  This leveled the playing field.
2nd--The 5 CVS stores I went into here?....only 1 had the sale price marked on the Finish products and none had the "$30/$10 Deal" marked on the shelf.  This meant the likelihood of someone stumbling upon the Deal while in the store was almost nil.  You had to be going into the store prepared to get this deal.

I not only bought 20 boxes of Finish, but I bought 5 tubes of Rembrandt toothpaste, as it was also part of the 'Spend $30/Get $10 CVS Cash Deal', it was on sale for $3.99 AND there were $2/1 IPQs for the Rembrandt.
Since 20 Finish didn't get me enough spending to get to 3 x $10 CVS Cash, the 5 Rembrandt tubes helped to get me to the spending threshold.

The candy bar was just a no brainer.....spend .75¢, get a .75¢ ECB back.lol

By doing the small transactions, once I got the 1st $10 CVS Cash card, I was able to use it to cover some, if not all my OOP after the Qs were applied to the orders.

I'm not going to give a play-by-play on each transaction because, frankly I'd be here all day typing it out.
Let's just do the final results, shall we?

I got....
20 x Finish dishwashing tablets
5 x Rembrandt toothpaste
1 x Snickers candy bar

I spent OOP(including tax)....$19.15  Regular retail was $96.89.
I have left in CVS Cash....$11.77
I could have had a lower OOP but I forgot to use the Cash card once...ugh.
Since this CVS card does NOT expire, I could theoretically save it until next January and use it if there is a similar CVS Deal and use it to cover the large OOP at the beginning. 
Or I could say I "spent" $7.38 here and deduct the Cash card amount from my OOP like so many others do.

I'll just call it $19.15 for 26 items.
And I'll mark having to buy dishwashing tablets for another year off my "To Do" List for 2012.
I can live with that..... 8-)

Sluggy

Timing Sales Cycles with Coupons=Savings!

 **This post is part of the Money Saving Challenge over on FRUGAL MAKES CENTS.**

It seems like all I do lately is shop and post about Rite-Aid trips!
I find this highly amusing as I signed on to go on a January Spending Diet.....lol
Yep, low spending and only the necessaries in January.
I don't know....maybe it's the contrarian in me.
I'm fairly frugal and keep to a food/hba budget each month.
But tell me NOT to spend and all hell breaks loose! ;-)

But I DO consider stocking up when things are cheap a necessary shop.
It may not be a life/death decision to buy that 10lbs. of pork loin today or this month but come the next 3-4 months when we want pork chops, I am not at the whim of the $3.99 or more per lb. at the grocery store butcher. 
Yep, saving big bucks on food/hba is necessary even in a no spending month deal.

And that is my not-so-subtle segue into one of the great ideas on saving money that anyone forearmed with some sales cycle knowledge and some spare food/hba budget cash can jump on.

Here is what I did over the last week or so to save money.

We have a dishwasher.
Dishwasher detergents are pricey, right?
So I pick it up when I find it cheap.
Once a year, Finish brand releases a high value coupon(some years they release it two times during a year).  It's generally $2 or more and it's usually available at the beginning of the year.
I knew this baby was coming and I was ready to start saving!
But phooey on the coupon gods.....this year my region did NOT get the yummy $2.25 off 1 item coupon!

So I bit the eBay bullet and paid someone to clip a pile of this coupon for me.
And wouldn't ya know it! the sales started for Finish dishwasher detergent immediately after the coupon came out the Sunday before last.

Walgreen's had a deal last week....Finish was on sale for $3.49 a box.  After coupon & tax here, it was $1.45 a box.  And for each box you bought you received a $1.50 RR(1 per transaction), making it free after Q and Register Reward.

My envelope of coupons arrived on Thursday.  I was chomping at the bit to use these babies so I went up to Wags.
Usually by Thursday here at Wags, with the good or free deals(which this was!), the shelves are long past cleared.
This particular coupon not being released here worked in my favor.....Wags was lousy with Finish!! ;-)
I did 2 transactions and bought 2 boxes.....plus a clearance jar of Italian Herbs as we were out.

Total spent....$3.49($2.90 for the dish detergent).
I have $3 in RRs to roll.
Why did I stop at 2 boxes?
Well, first off I am NOT anxious to get back into the Wags scene and rolling RRs and second, I knew Rite-Aid and CVS would have deals on this item in short order.

And the very next week(yesterday), those 2 drug chains started sales on Finish. 
The Rite-Aid deal is BOGO which is pretty sweet usually.  Not so sweet if the regular price on 1 box is $6.49 however!lol
So 2 boxes on BOGO sale using 2 x $2.25 Qs still means I am out of pocket(or out of free gift card in my case)$1.99 for 2 boxes or $1 a box + tax.
CVS came through with a better deal.  This week the Finish is on sale for $3 a box, which after $2.25 Q makes each box .75¢+ tax.  And if you buy $20 of Airwick and/or Finish this week you get a $10 ECB reward back.
So the deal is buy 7 boxes, spend $5.25 out of pocket and get $10 in ECBs back.
Even without the ECB, you spend less OOP than at Rite-Aid with the Q.

The problem is finding 7 boxes here in the CVS stores past 9am on Sunday morning!
They get hit and hit early and hard on the good deals....
But again, no $2.25 in our inserts worked to my advantage.  I slept late on Sunday and still found plenty of Finish in the late afternoon to buy....
And I bought 14.
I did the deal on my card....

And then I did it again on Hubs card at a different CVS.
I still had 4 Qs left.  So I used them at Rite-Aid, but we'll talk about Sunday's Rite-Aid rampage another time. ;-)

I spent $11.14 with tax at CVS for 14 boxes.
$2.90 at Wags + $11.14 at CVS=$14.04 for 16 boxes of dishwasher detergent and I have $3 to spend at Wags and $20 to spend at CVS.
After I spent zero out of pocket to buy 4 more at Rite-Aid(thanks to my free gift cards and +Up Rewards) I now have a yearly supply of dishwasher detergent in place.

Yes, I may buy a bottle or box here or there if it's an amazing price or free during the rest of the year, but this is one item I can check off my needing to purchase for the whole year list!

Sluggy