Money for nothing...toiletries for free

Today, I got 6 bottles of dish washing detergent, 2 3-packs of bar soap, 1 bottle of shampoo, 1 bottle of conditioner, and a tube of hand lotion for free.

I also paid 39 cents for a pack of facial cleansing/makeup remover towelettes.

Oh and a couple weeks ago I got 5 bottles of dish washing detergent for free too.

How did I do that? I shop at CVS and use the extra bucks I earn to buy stuff that we can use in the future or need right now.

 At CVS you can earn extra bucks in a variety of ways.

• Purchase an item that they are offering extra bucks for. Example today, if you purchased a certain 3-pack of Dial bar soap, that was on sale, you received $1 in extra bucks for purchasing it.
• Have an ExtraCare Card and use it. It is basically their customer rewards card (you can't get the sale prices in the store without one). Several times a year (I'm not entirely sure if it is 3 or 4 times a year), CVS gives you back 2% of what you spent during a certain time period in the form of extra bucks.
• Join their beauty club. For every $50 in beauty products purchased (makeup, facial lotion, and so on) you receive $5 in extra bucks.
• Also, if you bring your own reusable shopping bag and have a special bag scan card (which costs $0-$1, depending on what deal they're offering on it that week) you earn 1 point for every time you use it. According to my receipt today it now takes 8 reusable bag points to receive $1 in extra bucks.

I started shopping at CVS earlier this year because I no longer live near a Target and I walk near a CVS every day on my way to and from work making in convenient and cost effective for me to shop there. I usually shop there after work before I catch a bus home. Where I lived previously there were no CVS stores, so I wasn't familiar with them personally, but a number of blogs I read had mentioned they were a good place to shop for toiletries.

Today was one of my better extra buck purchases. Usually I put it toward items I was going to buy that week anyway. However, today I had a lot of extra bucks and I was well stocked up on most items. Before I went to the store I counted up my extra bucks, I had $8.50, plus a 50 cent coupon for a specific bottle of dish washing detergent. I looked over the store ad for the week and saw dish washing detergent was on sale, both the kind I wanted and the one I had a coupon for. So I knew would put some of the extra bucks toward that. The rest would go toward items on my always buy list: bar soap, shampoo, conditioner, body wash, deodorant, lotion, toothpaste, and so on. When I arrived at the store I scanned my CVS card at the special kiosk they have. The scanner then reads your card and prints out coupons, and/or any extra bucks you might have from your last purchase (generally these are ones you didn't realize you had). In addition to a bunch of coupons I didn't end up using I had $5 in extra bucks print out. Which meant I had $13.50 in extra bucks.

First I grabbed a tube of hand lotion, then I went and got the dish washing detergent. Then, I counted up what I had so far and found I still had about $6 to spend, so I looked at a number of things on my always buy list and settled on 2 3-packs of bar soap, a bottle of shampoo and a bottle on conditioner. As I was heading to the register I saw that face towelettes were on sale and I had been wanting to buy them since we're hoping to go out of town soon. I figured I would pay almost full price for them, which was fine since I was getting all the rest of the stuff for free. So I was quite excited when I got to the register and discovered my skillful purchasing meant I only had to pay 39 cents including tax for the face towelettes.

Overall, a thrifty and successful trip to the store.