Walgreens shopping

Walgreen's has had some amazing deals lately. And when you use coupons, register rewards and strategic shopping to your advantage, you can get many health and beauty items for free or nearly free.

Take a look at my Walgreen's purchases on Sunday...

Note that 3 12-packs of Dr. Pepper didn't make it into the picture. The value of the merchandise is $58.28. I paid $3.88 out-of-pocket for all of this.

I had so much fun, and I am so into dental health, that I did it again on Monday (again, the Dr. Pepper is missing from the picture).

The value before sales/coupons/register rewards $67.26. I paid $4.37 for all this.

The key is to buy items that produce register rewards, use coupons to get the total down, and use the register rewards to buy other products that produce register rewards.

This week is a good week to get started on this: buy 2 participating Listerine products, use 2 $2.00 printables (found here: print the coupon, hit the back button, refresh, retry, and it will print again), pay $5.00 plus tax, and the register will print out a reward for $4.50.

Use this register reward to buy the Colgate toothpaste for $4.49 and pay only tax. Then, the Colgate purchase will produce a $4.50 reward.

There are rules to successful shopping like this at Walgreen's: you cannot have more coupons than items (and register rewards count as a coupon) and you cannot 'roll' register rewards on the same deal. Example: The reward that prints out for the Colgate can be used to buy another Colgate toothpaste, but another register reward will not print.

I'll be covering deals like this and more in my class at Waubonsee Community College.

For the basics and how to get started, check out I Heart Wags.

For more ideas, check out Jamie at I Am A Money Magnet and Suzanne at Hounding with Frugalsuz.