Deals: Household Goods

Walgreen’s – best deal-shopping drugstore/household goods in PDX
Quirks, Tips & Tricks:
· You can stack weekly store flier coupons or with a manufacturers coupon.
· Has one or more items weekly that are “free after Register Rewards.” For example, this week it’s Colgate Sensitive Toothpaste. Pay $4.99 and get a coupon for $4.99 off your next order.
· You cannot have more coupons than you have items, including Register Rewards. Use cheap items as fillers if needed.
· Give coupons in this order: Register Rewards, manufacturer’s coupons, store coupons
· Does not have a corporate written coupon policy.
· Watch the expiration date on RRs. It’s usually only around 2 weeks.
· Employees are often not clear on the RR program. Most of the time, if you explain clearly, they are very nice. You can use a coupon on an item that will produce a RR (I’m keeping a copy of this week’s ad that clearly shows that). You can use an RR to pay for an item that produces an RR as long as it is not the same offer or manufacturer. For example, I could use a Crest RR from last week to pay for the Colgate RR-producing item this week – they are different offers and different manufacturers. I cannot use the Colgate RR to buy another Colgate RR-producing product.
· If a coupon is for more than the value of an item (ie, you have a $2.25/1 coupon for an item on sale for $2), the Walgreen’s register beeps. Sometimes a cashier will override and you will get the $.25 overage. If not, you can add a second of the same item and the coupon will go through. In this example, you would end up with two products worth $4 for $1.75 – still better than one product for $2.

Rite Aid – drugstore with deals; not as good as Walgreen’s
Quirks, Tips & Tricks:
· Has a monthly rebate program, Single Check Rebates (SCR). Some items are a partial rebate, some are free after rebate.
· Free after rebate items are usually only good for one week.
· Rebate receipts can be entered online and a check is mailed monthly. You can log in and add and save receipts as many times as you want, but you can only submit the rebates once per month. Wait until the end of the month in case any new great deals come up.

Wal-Mart
· I rarely shop at Wal-Mart, but mostly because there isn’t one anywhere near our house. Crystal @ moneysavingmom regularly post Wal-Mart cheap and free items after coupons. No rebates, double coupons or anything extra, just cheap coupon savings.

Target
· No free after rebate or Catalina programs, but has started doing some gift cards with certain purchases. When combined with coupons, these can be cheap or free. See weekly posts from monesavingmom or frugallivingnw.