Store Loyalty Cards

Store Loyalty Cards are great things to have.  Most of the time they don't cost you anything to have.  Some do so see if the cost for the card is worth the savings.  Are you going to at least save what the card cost?  If not do not get the card.  Places like Walgreens (Wag), CVS, and Kroger (my local stores) have cards that are free.  I'll explain some about each in a bit.  Getting cards is like having free cash in your hand at each time.

CVS has a card called ExtraBucks (EB).  EB come on certain items each week.  Watch their ad to know which items has EB.  These items can be free after EB.  Normally you can only get one item with your card.  I do not count them as free cause up front I had to pay for them.  The EB's are good on your next transaction and normally have an expiration date of month (always look).  Now you can get items for free and have moneymakers.  Moneymakers are where you save more than the item cost.  For example:  CVS has Thermacare wraps 3 count box for $2.99 (free after EB's) you have a coupon for $2 and you have EB's from a previous transaction of $2.  So you You need to pick up another item because CVS will not give you cash back.  They have caramels at the register that cost 33 cents.  Buying a caramel(s) (Wag does it too) is still saying money because the coupon is more than the caramel.  So for it to look simple:

Thermacare wrap $2.99
 coupon                -2.00
                                .99
EB (already had)   -2.00
                             -1.01
buy 3 caramels          .99  
                                -.02

You have to pay tax so that will get rid of your negative balance.  Then you will get $2EB to use next time.

WAG is every similar to CVS.  Wag does not (at this time) have a limit on how many you can purchase.  Their restrictions come from having Register Rewards (RR) (like EB's).  You can not use your RR to buy the same item and get more RR's.  WAG also will not give you RR's for multiple times for the same item on the same purchase.  You will need to have the cashier ring your products up separately.  Say you are buying three razors that have RR's.  If you buy all three on one ticket you will only get one RR but if you ring them up and pay for each separately you will get RR's for all three.  For example they have a sale on razors you can buy what you like buy you can not take the RR's from the first one and buy the second on and get another RR.  Wag also allows you to stack coupons.  Each month they have a coupon book of Wag store coupons with the ads in store.  These coupons come from Wag and not the manufacturer. There is almost always a coupon for Cottonelle toilet paper in there.  You can use that coupon along with a manufacturers coupon from the internet or Sunday paper and get double the savings.  Their catch is that you have to have as many items as coupons.  If you have 2 coupons you have to have 2 items.  Again this is where caramels come in handy.

Kroger has a Kroger Plus Card that saves instantly with each weeks ad.  They also have digital coupons on their website that you can load to save without having a coupon in hand.  The catch:  the digital coupons do not double like paper coupons.  Our Paducah Krogers double paper coupons up to 60 cents.  If there is a digital coupon loaded to your card you can not also use a paper coupon.  It is one or the other.  See which saves more before you ad the digital coupon.  You can also go to savingstar.com and link your card for additional savings.  I have not saved enough with it to get any benefit from it.

I know this may be confusing.  If you have any question you want me to clarify please let me know.  I will gladly try to explain it better.

~S~