Let's go CVS'ing!

Let's go CVS'ing!

CVS is a national chain of drug stores. A few years ago they introduced their version of a loyalty card, the ExtraCare Card. It's free and you can get one at the registers. What's the big deal? Well each week they offer items that you can earn ExtraCare Bucks (ECB's or EB's) when you buy them. Sometimes the products are free after ECB's! The trick is to "roll" your ECB's to keep your out of pocket (OOP) total as low as possible. I like to think of ECB's as CVS's version of Monopoly money.

ECB's are essentially CVS coupons. You can use them like cash to pay for your items there. They generally expire a month after printing.  If you misplace them, you might be able to print them from your account online.  Now here's the exciting part.  Lots of times the ECB deals will be on products that also have a manufacture's coupon for them.  This means that you can use coupon on the item to offset your cost or in some cases gain overage to apply towards other items.

CVS also has coupons that print out on the cash register tapes (CRT).  If you are fortunate to have one of the new price scanner machines, you can print them out there.  These are store coupons which are referred to as CVS CRT coupons.  CVS also puts out store coupons in magazines, tearpads, in email, etc.   As of writing this, CVS allows us to use a CVS cpn along with a manuf. cpn.