My Walgreens Trip

Today at Walgreens I picked up a few things and also had my first bad couponing experience. In all, I made three transactions. This is because certain items print Register Rewards - coupons that can be used on your next purchase, so I separated my orders. On my last order the cashier was having trouble scanning my Register Rewards coupon since she had already scanned a coupon that was for $1 off two cereals. She tried telling me that the coupon was acting as TWO separate coupons, and you can only have one coupon per item. First of all this is not true in any store I've been to; you can have one manufacturer and one store coupon per item. Second of all the coupon does not function as taking $1 off of each item but rather the total of the two items. She called her manager over and the manager rudely explained this again. I asked the cashier to simply scan the coupons again, only this time to scan the Register Rewards coupon first. That time, it worked. WIN!

Here's what I did today:

Transaction #1
Gillette Fusion Proglide Razor Kit $9.89
- $4 manufacturer coupon
Paid $6.68 Out of pocket, received $5 Register Rewards

Transaction #2
Bic Soleil Razor 4-pack $5.99
Reach toothbrush 2-pack $2.50
2 Rimmel Lip Glosses $0.99 each
- (2) $1 off any Rimmel product coupon
- $3 Bic soleil coupon
- $5 Register Rewards from Transaction #1
Paid $1.31 out of pocket, received $2 Register Rewards

Transaction #3
(2) Kellogg's Special K Cereals: 2/$5
- $1 off any two boxes of Special K (kelloggs.com)
- $2 Register Rewards from Transaction #2
Paid $2 out of pocket, or $1 per cereal!

As you see in transaction #2 I did not have a coupon for the toothbrushes. Well, I did, but it turns out I couldn't use it because I had accidentally picked up the wrong kind. However, I purchased them anyway because without them, I wouldn't have been able to use the $5 register rewards coupon since it would be more than my pre-tax total. Without the toothbrushes and the $5 coupon I would have spent ~$3.50 on this order, but buy using the toothbrushes as a "filler" item I was able to actually pay less!!

My total today was $9.99. Without coupons, I would have paid $25.36, or a savings of about 60%. Not bad!