Walgreens

When I first learned about deal-shopping at Walgreens earlier this year I was terribly excited about all the free stuff you could get, and of course, got all the free stuff I could get.
Eventually, though, I got plenty of free stuff, and too, it occured to me the stuff wasn't really free because I was paying tax on it. Paying only tax for something you want/need/use is great, but when it's not something you want/need/use, not so much.
So then I turned my efforts to buying only money-making (MM) items (unless it was something we would want/need/use).

Of course I wasn't really "buying" the items, but 'rolling' my Register Rewards (RRs) into them. For instance, say a Widget costs $8.00, and I have a $4.00 coupon off the widget, and then I get back a $6.00 RR for purchasing the widget. With the coupon, the widget only cost me $4.00, which I paid with an RR from a previous deal. After getting the $6.00 RR, I've 'rolled' my $4.00 RR to a $6.00 RR. In other words, a $2.00 profit for me.

Problem being, I've ended up rolling more RR's than I can control. My RRs expire and I fnd myself rushing to the store and rolling them over on whatever just to keep from losing them.
So, I decided to change my game again. I plan to keep X amount of RRs per week, and then do like Jenny suggests and spend the rest on something we can use.

I usually hate to buy anything not on sale or I don't have a coupon for, and especially not at drug store prices, but I'm having to change my mindset to realize that I'm not spending my money on the stuff, it's "profit" earned from using coupons: free money to spend on items we use.

Last night I had a total of $82.00 in Register Rewards. $22.00 worth of them were 5 days expired.
I decided I was going to work with only those expired RRs, and the rest I would spend.

Beginning with $22.00 RRs, I worked out a 7-transaction-plan to spend what coupons I had while keeping as low an out-of-pocket expense as possible.
Most of my plans went well, I ran into items being out as I went on and had to skip some things and readjust, and not do the last plan at all, but it wasn't a big deal.

Started with $22.00 RRs
Value of items before coupons: $190.58
Out-of-pocket spent incl. Tax: $12.18
RRs Remaining: $57.00*
Final Total $22.82 profit

*These remaining RRs are from today only, originating with the $22.00 RRs.

I still had $60.00 other RRs which I planned to try to use at Publix if I could, or come back to Wags later and spend them on things we'd use, but in the meantime I thought I'd just blow some, for the heck of it.Value of Items: $14.27
-1.29 B1G1 Trident coupon
=$12.98
Spent $12.00 RR
+ $1.42 cash
Received $1.00 RR for Trident (Couldn't help it, lol)