I few months ago I began looking for ways to cut back on our household budget. I came across the practice of shopping at drugstores using coupons and the store's rewards program to get all kinds of name brand household, hygiene and beauty products for free or very cheap. I can use the extra rewards I earn to also purchase other items off my shopping list like diapers, wipes, bread and milk. Not having to spend much money on these items and learning how to use coupons has allowed me to reduce my regular grocery budget considerably and I am working to lower it even more.

Below is a basic explanation of the CVS Pharmacy program. Check here to locate a CVS Store near you.

The Extra Care Bucks program at CVS Pharmacies is a bonus program for frequent shoppers.
In order to participate, you will need an ExtraCare card which is key to all your CVS deals. To get the sale prices on items in the store, you have to use the card. It is a FREE program similar to a grocery store rewards programs. You can log on to CVS.com to order a card or go into a CVS store and pick one up. Picking a card up at the store allows you to use your card immediately rather than waiting a week or so for it to arrive in the mail.

Extra Care Bucks or ECBs are “coupons” sponsored by the companies of the products you buy that print at the bottom of your receipt after purchasing an item that earns ECBs. These ECB coupons can only be used at CVS pharmacies. A $1 ECB is equal to $1 and can be spent on anything in the store with a few exceptions: Alcohol, Tobacco, Gift Cards, and Prescriptions. CVS sales usually run Sunday thru Saturday or Friday thru Thursday. Each week in the new CVS circular you can find what items will be earning Extra Care Bucks for that week. CVS also has items that are monthly ECB earners and can be found in the monthly ECB brochure located in the store.

There are two other ways to earn Extra Care Bucks.
1) You get 2 percent back for all your total purchases in the form of ECBs (excludes alcohol, tobacco, lottery, gift cards, money orders, postage stamps, pre-paid cards, prescriptions, and special order Home Health Care items, including footwear). The 2 percent is calculated after coupons.
2) You get one Extra Buck for every two prescriptions you buy.

For these two types of purchases, ECBs are awarded every three months. CVS will track how much you’ve spent for the three-month period and then give you the Extra Bucks at the end of the quarter printed out on your receipt of the first purchase you make after the three-month period ends.

Quarterly earned ECBs can also be printed online at the CVS Extra Care website. If you print your ECBs online, they will not print again at the store. However, if your ECBs are printed on your receipt, they still show up online. In fact, ECBs will remain online until they expire. Although ECBs can be printed online multiple times, they will only scan once since each unique ECB coupon has it’s own unique code, regardless of the number of times it is printed. Once that code has been scanned, it will not scan again.

Extra Care Bucks expire 4 weeks from the date they are printed. Most cashiers will accept expired ECBs up to a week or two. It’s at their discretion.

Any Extra Care Bucks, Cash Register Tape coupons, or Scanner coupons (explained below) you earn are connected to your card number and are non-transferable. The card is also how CVS enforces limits on some specials.

Extra Care Cards are limited to one per person; however each person in your household can get one. It is reasonable to say that if a family member would go to CVS to make their own purchases, then they can have their own card.
Households using 5 different cards to do their deals each week unless they are truly buying for their parents, their in-laws, their own home, an elderly relative, and a sister-in-law all of whom live in separate households, are not following the rules. Just b/c you can have multiple cards does not mean they expect you to clear the shelves using multiple cards and ignore their "per household" limit.

Playing the CVS game

In general, CVS prices are higher than other stores. It’s the ECBs that make CVS deals so lucrative. Combining coupons with CVS sales will allow you to purchase your items for free or a lot less than elsewhere. Once you have your Extra Care Card you are ready to shop. Look over the weekly CVS sales flier and the monthly flier. Items that earn ECBs will be marked. When just starting out, look for sale items that earn the same amount of ECBs as the item costs. Usually there are a few items each week that are “free” after ECBs earned.

For example, say toothpaste is on sale for $2.99 and it earns $2.99 in Extra Care Bucks. You will have an up front out of pocket (OOP) cost of $2.99 but you will receive back an Extra Care Buck valued at $2.99 to spend on anything* in the store. Say there is a purchase limit of 5 on the toothpaste. You can take the $2.99 ECB you just earned and purchase another tube that earns $2.99 ECBs. Now you have two toothpastes purchased for the upfront cost of $2.99 and you have another $2.99 ECB to spend.

You could do this three more times until you reach the 5 toothpaste limit and would only have spent $2.99 OOP for 5 tubes of toothpaste. After the limit of 5 has been reached, you could buy a sixth tube but it would not generate an ECB. You can purchase all 5 tubes of toothpaste in one transaction for an upfront cost of $14.95. On your receipt, you will receive and ECB valued at $14.95. Likewise, if you purchased 3, your ECB would print for $8.97.

CVS helps you keep track of how many items you have purchased towards your rewards limit by printing your item tally at the bottom of your receipt. After buying your first tube of toothpaste on the bottom of your receipt would print the following:

Brand x Toothpaste, Buy 1 Get $2.99 EB
Amount Toward this Reward 1
Quantity Needed to Earn Reward 4

Once you have reached the offer limit it will say offer limit reached.

It’s important to remember that ECB rewards are not instant savings and in the beginning you will have a higher OOP. This is where savvy CVS shoppers learn to grow their ECB “bank” so that eventually there is little or no upfront OOP costs on their purchases.
The best way to do this is to purchase the weekly or monthly free deals and combine them with coupons. Start out small with only one or two items per transaction until you get the hang of the system.

More advanced transactions include the use of manufacturer’s coupons, cash register tape coupons (CRTs) or scanner coupons. CVS Cash Register Tape coupons are CVS coupons that print out at the bottom of your receipt to be used on a specific product such as $1.00 off Advil. Scanner coupons are also CVS coupons that print out of the price check machines. These machines are usually found near the front of the store. Just scan your CVS Extra Care Card to get the coupons to print.

Sometimes the CRTs or Scanner coupons are random and sometimes they are driven by the items you have purchased on your account. Once in awhile, CVS sends out $x off $xx coupons like $2.00 off a $10.00 purchase. In this case your merchandise total needs to be $10 or higher. The biggest rule to these coupons is that they must be scanned before any other coupons. It will not work once other coupons or ECBs are used because the total will be lower than the required amount.

As general coupon rule, only one manufacturer’s coupon per item purchased can be used. However, CVS allows you to combine one CVS coupon with one manufacturer’s coupon. This is called stacking and is a great way to save even more.

Let’s say you have a coupon for $.50 off brand x toothpaste. You scan your Extra Care Card and you get a coupon for $1.00 off brand x toothpaste. Now, combine that with the ECB deal of buy brand x paste for $2.99 receive $2.99 in ECBs.

Brand x toothpaste - $2.99
minus $1.00 CVS coupon
minus $.50 MF coupon
Total = $1.49 (Earn $2.99 ECBs)
Profit of $1.50!

You have just grown your ECB “bank” by $1.50. Having $20 - $30 in ECBs is a good amount to work with to be able to purchase items and roll your ECBs from week to week.

When making your purchases, get in the habit of first handing the cashier your Extra Care Card. This is the only way you will get the sales prices.
Next hand over any CVS $x off $xx coupons, general CVS coupons and then any Manufacturer coupons. The last coupons you should hand over are your Extra Care Bucks to pay for your items. You can pay any remaining balance with cash, credit card, or CVS gift card.

It takes time and patience and being organized with your coupons and shopping list is key. Shop with a calculator, check to make sure you have selected the right item or flavor that earns ECBs, and always check the rewards limit on your items. If you mess up, ask a sales associate. They are there to help. Knowing what your OOP should be before you get to the register is very helpful in knowing if there is a problem with your transaction. It also helps in organizing what ECBs to use. You can not use ECBs to pay for tax. So if your items cost $10 before tax, you can not use an ECB over $10. You do not get money back so if your total came to $10 and you use an $11 ECB, you would lose $1.

Never leave the store or parking lot without checking your receipt for accuracy and to make sure all your ECBs printed and you got credit for all your coupons. It’s a lot harder to get things corrected after the fact. Remember, you can always return something if you purchased the wrong item.

It sounds a lot more complicated than it really is. After a few transactions you will catch on quick. Consider transferring your prescriptions to CVS when they offer a gift card with a new or transferred prescription. This is a great way to earn CVS cash for buying things you already buy. Gift cards are a great way to pay for any OOP costs.

My goal is to get shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, soap and all kinds of other toiletries and hygiene products for free and use those savings to reduce other areas of my grocery budget. Occasionally you will purchase items that you might not necessarily need at the time in order to roll your ECBs. It's a fun way to try new products. Any extra items I get that may go bad or expire before they can be used, I donate them to family and shelters that can use them.

Take your time - have fun!