Darn. Last year from Oct to January, CVS shoppers went thru what I call “monitor mania.” The deals went something like this–Buy a glucometer (blood sugar monitor) and you received anywhere from $5 to $20, yes $20, ECBs back. Here’s what was so awesome about it–if you went back to the pharmacy, they had these special Diabetes coupon booklets for FREE monitors. And many of the monitor deals were LIMIT 5. So I would go, get a monitor or two, pay for them with the FREE coupons, and receive $20 back in ECBs for each one. And some of them were month-long deals too, so you had plenty of time for your stores to restock the monitors if they were out.

I had literally hundreds of dollars in ECBs last year. It was fun. I donated all the monitors to various places and they were happy to get them.

But alas, this year’s Diabetes coupon booklet is out. And no coupons for free monitors. Just plain old “Buy a monitor, get $xx back in ECBs.” So unless some decent manufacturer’s coupons come out, no monitor mania this autumn.

Well, some couponers are excited about this week at CVS but I’m not. I probably won’t even go.

Always Infinity pads: 4.98 with 4.98 in ecb back. Limit 1.
Glaceau vitamin water: 32 oz, 2.29 with 2.29 in ecb back. Limit 1.
Bic Soleil: 5.99 with 4.00 back in ecb; good deal if you have either the $2 or the $4 coupons floating around out there. I don’t–so that means either our papers didn’t get it or I overlooked it.
Acensia breeze meter: 14.99 with 10.00 ecb back. This is a good deal if you have the coupon for a free meter, I believe it was in the papers in July. I don’t know why, but I don’t have it. I donate the meters.
Colgate: some items (check store for specifics) are 2.99 with 2.00 back in ecb, so free if you have the 1.00 coupons from recent papers.

First, although there seem to be some pretty good Proctor & Gamble deals at Walgreen’s this week, I’m going to sit it out. I don’t have any Register Rewards or Gift Cards to get started on this deal, so anything I do would require cash oop. And I just can’t justify spending even $10 or $15 on cleaning supplies or Febreze when I have a huge stockpile. That plus I need to get my mojo back.

I had a horrible trip at CVS yesterday. I had three Dawn coupons that expired yesterday so I wanted to take advantage of that. Shelf was bare–hmm, maybe starting this blog wasn’t such a good idea, other shoppers are clearing the shelf. Just kidding. No Dawn, move on.

Grab a Fusion razor for each card (I have 2 CVS cards). Grab a Cover Girl foundation for each card. Grab a free Cover Girl item to go with each foundation for each card. Ok, according to my math, this is only going to cost me about $8.50 and I have a $10 ECB to use on each card. So I go find the $1.97 M&Ms. Grab a bag for each card. Done.

It went all downhill from there. First the cashier said that she couldn’t take both the bogo coupon for Cover Girl and the $1 off foundation coupon for Cover Girl. Said she had tried it yesterday and the register wouldn’t let her push it through, I have to pick one coupon that I’m going to use. On one card I still do the bogo, on the other I pick the $1 and put the other CG item back. Then, since I grabbed the pink breast cancer M&Ms, they were $3.49 instead of $1.97, even though they were in the bin marked $1.97. I get so much free stuff at CVS that I don’t like to cause a hassle, and a line was starting to form. And on the card where I did the free bogo CG item, I was charged for the $8.99 item, got the $5.79 foundation free, got a $5.79 ECB back, but had to pay the difference of about $3.

In any event, I ended up paying a few bucks on each card oop, instead of my transaction ending up to be almost free like I planned, which is a bummer. Luckily I did just acquire a $30 gift card, having just transferred a prescription yesterday and using a Rite Aid coupon. So I put my balances on that, but didn’t plan on using up almost a third of that card that very day, I like to make them last longer.

It just bums me out because I’m usually much better at this, and I really didn’t need any of the above items, and my ECBs were still good for another 2 weeks or so, so it’s not like I had to roll them yesterday. I was just in the mood to get some good deals. And that’s what I get for going after a stressful day at work with a cranky, teething toddler.

At least I still have about $12 ECB on both cards and about $22 left on the gift card. In October I’ll focus on building that back up.