I know for most of you I'm preaching to the choir, but recently I had the opportunity to reinforce this concept to my youngest son, AJ, when he needed to buy batteries for his digital voice recorder. We were on our way to bible study and he'd forgotten to bring some from home, so we stopped at a Walgreens on the way. As we passed through the doors, I grabbed an ad. We went over to the batteries and AJ started comparing prices as shown on the shelf labels. I took a quick look through the ad and pointed out that one brand was 2 for $5. He needed 9V and AA. So he was going to get one 9V and 2 AA's.

Then AJ took a look, and he saw an even better deal. Walgreens brand was Buy 1 Get 1 Free but the packs were doubled. So he ended up with two 9V and 4 AA's for $6.49, paying $3.25 vs. $5.00 for what he would have paid with the first deal I saw. Good catch, AJ! Your old mother must be getting rusty!

This happened again when I went to get my prescription filled for the Prednisone and antibiotics. I looked around for an ad, and asked the cashier if they were all out of ads. This was on Wednesday morning. She asked me, “What did you want it for?”

Hmmm… weird question, I thought. I responded, “Well, I have to wait 20 minutes for my prescription to be filled so I thought I'd look through your ad and see if I might want to spend any money here at your store.” She apologized and said they were all out.

So I went back to the pharmacy area to sit and wait, and lo and behold there were a few inserts there. And JACKPOT!!! They had a coupon for a $25 gift card if you get your prescription filled, new or transferred! When the prescription was filled, I asked about using the coupon, because the fine print said you couldn't use it if you had used a prescription coupon in the previous six months and I know I just did this not even four months ago. The gal said I couldn't even use the coupon there, AGH! Because it was for a brand new Walgreens. But she was very nice and asked if I wanted to just pick up my prescription at the other store, she would have it moved over there so I could get the coupon. She whispered to me that she would have done the same thing. So we went to the new Walgreens; I had two coupons and two prescriptions. The pharmacist there was short handed and was playing cashier, pharmacist, consultant and running the drive through window. I asked him about using both coupons, but he said we could only use one per household. I had read the fine print very carefully, and this was not one of the rules, but I didn't feel like pushing it.

So I earned $25 just by looking through an ad that day! Now I really need to look into the Drugstore Game to spend that $25 wisely.

Normally I try to do this ahead of time, but when I haven't had a chance to, I always grab the ad and have a quick look. Let me know if you have had any impromptu savings like these in the comments, I love hearing about these kinds of deals!

Yours Truly,

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