How I get deals at CVS

Sign-up

In order to get the best deals at CVS, you need to sign up for an ExtraCare card. Once you have one, you should register and sign up to get CVS emails. When you do, you will also get coupons to use and even get surveys you can take to earn more extracare bucks.

You can also sign up for the CVS beauty club to get extra offers.

Read

Read a good deal blog that lists the weekly CVS deals along with coupon matchups. My favorites for CVS are Simply CVS and Coupon Katarina. They list all the deals and any coupons available to go with them.

Some of the deals will be cheap with just the coupon, but many of them are only cheap after extra care bucks. These are in-store dollars that you receive for purchasing certain items and can use on future purchases.

Roll

Once you've bought a few things and earned some extra care bucks, roll them onto future purchases. This is where the savings really comes in.

Tips

• Always scan your card at the price scanner when you go into the store. It will print personalized coupons for you, sometimes for free items.
  
• Extra care bucks expire, and some weeks have better deals than others, so if you can get something "free", it's often best to buy it to roll your ECB's, even if you don't really want or need it, just to extend the expiration dates of your bucks.
  
• If you have a manufacturers coupon for an item that is already free after ECB's, you still get the full ECB value listed in the add, so you can actually grow your ECB's, essentially making money for taking home the shampoo or toothpaste.
  
• When you have more than a certain number of ECB's (for me, around 5; some people carry over a lot more), it's best to spend some down by buying milk or some non-ECB deals that you happen to need. This keeps you from having a ton that you have to spend before they expire.
  
• You can only use one manufacturers coupon and one store coupon per item, so if you have 2 $2 ECB's and want to buy a $4 item, you'll need to buy a cheap filler item.
  
• If you can go more than once a week, or split your order into multiple transaction, you can minimize your out of pocket spending by only paying for the first item and using ECB's to pay for the rest.
  
• You also get quarterly ECB's in the amount of 2% of your out of pocket spending. I now get almost nothing since most of my spending is coupons and ECB's.
  
• Also get a green bag tag. It costs $1, but if you attach it to a reusable bag and scan it with your extra care card, you will earn $1 ECB for every four scans.
  
  

Make sense?