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.
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!
ReplyDeletecrazy (in a good way) and cool
ReplyDeleteAWESOME!! renews some good feelings about Wags! do you have a great relationship with that manager?
ReplyDeleteAwesome job!
ReplyDeleteI'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!
ReplyDelete-- Liane Harrold, Executive Director
Take Five Community Outreach
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!
ReplyDeleteHere is my email address if you want to chat about it:
westfairmount@gmail.com
Thanks for your posts!
Sheila
I'm a newbie so please excuse my ignorance...but I don't understand part of this
ReplyDeleteyou 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?
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!
ReplyDeleteCP
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.
ReplyDeleteWOW! This is amazing, for everyone involved. You are super lucky to have a nice Wags manager, lol. :) Good luck trying to beat this record.
ReplyDelete