Sunday, November 28, 2010

How the Epic Purchase was constructed....

Yesterday I gave you a summary of what I bought at the Walgreens 3-day sale ($1550 worth of stuff for less than $20).  Here's how that was possible:

Transaction A                                                   Transaction B
Crest Toothpaste $2.99                                    Robitussin to Go          $2.49
Oral B Toothbrush $2.25                                 Old Spice Body Spray  $3.99
Scunci Hairbands  $1.99                                  Secret Body Spray        $3.49
Colgate Toothpaste $2.99                                Canned Oranges           $0.39
Campbells Soup     $0.59
Candy Cane Pen    $0.20
                             
Total:                    $11.01                                      Total                  $10.36
                                                                                                    
- $1 Crest Coupon
-$10 Register Rewards from Trans. B                  - $10.25 RR (Trans. A)
 
= $0.01 out-of-pocket cost                                  = $0.11 out-of-pocket cost

These were the basic scenarios.  Since I paid no sales tax (all was donated to charity, so I was able to use a tax exemption), I was paying around 12 cents for each pair of transactions.  I had to make some slight adjustments along the way--when we got low on oranges, I switched to Scotch mailers at the same cost.  They had clearance Degree deodorant for $0.78, which when I swapped that for the soup and the pen in transaction A, meant I paid nothing out of pocket.  That was pretty cool.  I did these basic scenarios about 60 times, and then I had a few others I did to "clean up" some of the special order they'd made for me.  Not everything came in as expected, so a lot of adjusting was done on the fly, but overall, I felt pretty good about how it turned out.

Pictures to come tomorrow, before it all gets loaded up to be dropped off.

10 comments:

  1. That's a crazy lot of time to spend at Walgreens. And a crazy awesome result. So very very awesome. I'm curious to know how much time went into the planning of this scenario. That's a lot of math!

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  2. crazy (in a good way) and cool

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  3. AWESOME!! renews some good feelings about Wags! do you have a great relationship with that manager?

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  4. I'm just not sure that "Thank you" is enough. Seriously Kevin...you have helped Take Five out FOR MONTHS! I printed out and showed Cathy and Hollywood your first blog post, and they just couldn't stop smiling! They were so excited...and we are so very, very thankful!

    -- Liane Harrold, Executive Director
    Take Five Community Outreach

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  5. Hello Coupon Prof, I am also a couponing professor and I have spent the last several weeks trying to work out a way to integrate college students in a couponing effort to support our food bank. I would love to hear more about your class. I am in awe of your ninja skills!

    Here is my email address if you want to chat about it:

    westfairmount@gmail.com

    Thanks for your posts!

    Sheila

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  6. I'm a newbie so please excuse my ignorance...but I don't understand part of this

    you pay for all the stuff in transaction A, receive $10 rewards, use that for transaction B...so how can you use the transaction B RR for transaction A since it already happened?

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  7. Liane--you are most welcome. J--you're right, you have to have a way to "get into" these scenarios before you can roll back and forth. I did some other smaller transactions to build up $10 in RR, and then I started with A, went to B, back to A and so on. Hope that helps!

    CP

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  8. I am new as I just happened across your blog a minute ago. Please explain for me how you did the huge transaction A and B at Walmart. You had to begin with a purchase and a coupon and then went back and forth with individual items? Thanks.

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  9. WOW! This is amazing, for everyone involved. You are super lucky to have a nice Wags manager, lol. :) Good luck trying to beat this record.

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