I told Aboy that I was going to go to Walgreens and Target. He said, “Oh, good – how long do you think you’ll be, because you can drop me off at the gym [which is around the corner from Walgreens] and pick me up when you’re done”. I told him “OK, sounds good – I should only be a couple hours… and I’m going to need $10 to shop with”.
The gym is not too far from the house – we live in the center of Denton. Everything is within a 5 minute drive from the house. We really found a great spot.
Around 2:30pm, we were both ready to go. I grabbed my coupon bag – which holds 2 zippered binders and an accordion file… Aboy grabbed his gym bag and we were on our way.
I dropped Aboy off and he told me he’d be ready by 4pm. He got out of the car and waited for me to pull off. I pulled out of the parking lot and onto Loop 288 and when I got to the light realized “Shit! He didn’t give me the money!!”
Oh well, this is the opportunity for me to really put myself to the test – I had a couple bucks on me… but anything over $5 and I was gonna have to put stuff back on the shelf. I wasn’t going on a major shopping trip – but I did have some specific items I was going to get – like 19¢ Activia multi-packs and free macaroni & cheese & frozen dinners from Target.
I really just wanted to walk around Walgreens – I heard through some of the websites I follow – there may be an opportunity for free nail polish remover.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Drug Store game - CVS, Walgreens and Rite-Aid (BTW, there’s no Rite-Aid in Denton) usually have great sales week to week – but they offer “rewards” or “bucks” for you to shop there and in many cases – you can flip the rewards to pay for the items that you don’t have coupons for. I use my rewards to buy things like toilet paper, cleaning products and personal care items – you know… the stuff that ends up in the sewer.
So, I went to Walgreens first – just to do (what I like to call) the mall-walk and see what they had on sale/ clearance.
Once I got into the store – I started out with the cosmetics. There were lots of clearance tags on many of the products and they had a great sale going on if you Buy one you Get one for 50% off (B1G1-50%). This sale applied to the clearance items as well. Sunday’s coupon inserts had some great cosmetics coupons and I got very excited because many of my coupons were $2.50 - $3 off and the items on clearance were $3.24 and lower.
So, I matched up my coupons with the items that were on clearance. I picked up some Revlon, L’Oreal and Covergirl items. I walked around the store and didn’t really see anything else worth buying and made my way to the register. I told the girl, “I need you to ring each item separately because I only have $5 on me and I need all my coupons to work”.
**Let me explain why that is important at Walgreens**
Walgreens will allow you to stack coupons (store coupons with manufacturers coupons) – BUT Walgreens will not allow you to use more coupons than you have items. If the cashier rings in 4 @ $2.99 – that makes 1 item = 1 coupon. I need to be able to use all 4 coupons.
So, she did as I asked and the order (before clearance prices were applied) was $128.90. After the clearance and B1G1-50% discounts, the order came down to $31.84 – and after coupons, I paid 40¢.
Pretty cool, right?
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I had walked around for so long in Walgreens – it was almost time to pick up Aboy so I went to the gym and waited for him to come out.
I was so proud of myself! I kept looking over the receipt to make sure it was real!
When Aboy got in the car I said (with an attitude), “You didn’t give me the money!” (but inside I was cracking up!) So Aboy says “So you didn’t go shopping?”
I had a smirk on my face when I replied “I sure did! … LOOK!” as I shoved the receipt in his face.
He took the receipt and examined it, then said… “Oh, you saved $28.50?... oh wait – you saved $128.50??!?”
He stuck his hand up to give me a high five and said “You’re really doing your thing, Boo!”
Then, when he looked in the bag and saw it was 20 pieces of make-up – he shot down my coupon hard-on with “This is all you got?”
UGH! Men!