Again I want to give a HUGE thank your to Claire from Saving Money Plan who is the mastermind behind the FREE Coupon Class. Make sure to go sign up on her blog so you can get the info straight from her! We will be following her great Coupon Course for the next 10 weeks to learn even MORE Ways To Save. So let’s begin this week’s class:

Week 1 Assignment:

Free or Nearly Free CVS Items

We are starting simple, of course, with the goal that after this week’s fun you’ll be so excited about all your free goodies that you’ll be looking forward to making things a bit more complicated in moving forward.

This Week’s Assignment:

If you learn nothing else from this couponing course, let it be that every single month you can pick up multiple free or very low cost items at Rite Aid and CVS and Walgreens without clipping any coupons at all. Although I am here to teach you why clipping coupons is so worth it (in later steps in the course), for now you should be amazed that weeks 1 and 2 don’t require any actual clipping!

However, just because I’m not yet asking you to start clipping coupons doesn’t mean that I don’t want you to start saving them! As of today, please start saving the Sunday papers you receive every week and put them in a box or drawer you have devoted to the project. Over time, those many coupons will prove to be a gold mine for you – and we’ll start using them next week;)

The CVS Extra Care Bucks (”ECB”) Program

The CVS system is based on the idea of the “extra care buck” or “ecb”. One ECB is worth one dollar, but ECBs are only good at CVS. So the key to CVS freebies are that you only get money back in the form of ECBs (coupons which are printed at the bottom of your receipt). If you buy something advertised as a product that will give you back ECBs those ECBs will print at the bottom of your receipt. These printed receipts are your money for you to use on the future at items at CVS. Thus, it is critical that you don’t throw out your receipts with ECBs printed on them!

If you buy something advertised as “free after ECBs”, then you will have the money in the form of an ECB coupon as soon as you leave the register. Many couponers *love* this because it means that then you can immediately use those free ECBs in a second “transaction” (purchase).

We’ll talk a bit more about that in later assignments, but here’s an example:

For instance, I walk into the store to pick up a $4.99 tube of lipstick that is advertised as “free after ECBs”. I purchase the lipstick (making sure they scan my ECB card) and immediately the $4.99 is printed out. So I can go back in the aisle, pick up some milk, come back to the cash register, and use the ECB coupons I received in the last transaction to pay, instead of paying with cash.

(Had I bought the milk and the lipstick all at one time, I would have paid out money for both, and had more ECB coupons to spend next time I come to CVS.) However, if you have an ECB for $4.99 and you only purchase $4 of stuff with it – you WON’T get a refund! So you want to always buy something worth a little more than the value of the ECBs you have.

Every month, a number of items at CVS are completely free after ECBs. The key to getting your feet wet in the ECB system is to pick up these items first. They are easy as pie and no coupons needed.

First, you need to know how to hear about the CVS deals for the month and the week. You can sign up to get your CVS weekly store circular delivered to your email here. They also come in your Sunday newspaper, and you can also find the circular at the front of the store. Finally, many couponers these days don’t even both to look at the circulars and simply make sure to log into a blog like this one to see the list of deals for that week. Then you can print that blog post and just take it with you to CVS.

Simple!

This week, the first thing you will need to do is sign up for the CVS Extra Care Buck program. Although you can do this online, I recommend going into your store to do so, because you will get your card immediately, and won’t have to wait a few weeks for it to get sent to you. Ask for an application at the register if you don’t see one out. If you want to do it online, just go to the CVS website.

Make sure your card is registered with your email address. You can do this on the original form, at CVS.com, or call 1-800-SHOP CVS. Eventually they will send you a $4/20 purchase coupon.