I got a pretty interesting reader question a few days ago. After some consideration, I thought it would be a great question to address as a post.
Lauren writes:
I recently got a total of 6 coupons for Pampers Cruisers. 4 of them are regular manufactures coupons, 1 is for Right Aid, and one is $3/1 diaper and 1 wipe. What would be your recommendations on how I can maximize these coupons? 2 of them expire by the end of July, the other ones end in either August or September.
It can be tempting when you have high value coupons to want to “force them” to work. So my first advice, Lauren, would be to resist this urge. Ask yourself…do the diapers HAVE to be Pampers? And do they HAVE to be purchased from Rite Aid?
If the answer is “no,” my favorite place to find diaper deals of the moment is Baby Cheapskate. Every week she has a feature called “Top Diaper and Formula Deals of the Week.” So if you are ever in need of diapers or formula, check there and you can see a quick run down of the best current deals.
Going back to Rite Aid…
1. Visit iheartriteaid. Given that you have coupons that expire the end of July, your goal should be to use them on the best sale that occurs in July. You can easily determine this by visitng iheartriteaid.com. There you’ll find weekly ad previews for the remaining weeks in July! Scan ahead to see if Pampers will be on sale in any of those weeks. At the moment, there is no preview for the last week of July up. I didn’t see any sales on Pampers for the remainder of the month. Since Pampers is a P&G brand and the P&G inserts are released first of the month, we may well have missed the boat on any Pampers sales for July already. But this would be your logical first step.
2. If there are no sales on Pampers, try to find a week that has a number of free-after-rebate items. Hang with me here…so I noticed the ad for July 18th has a number of free-after-rebate items. Check it out:
Colonaid $22.99…submit for $22.99 rebate…FREE
Dulcolax $9.99…submit for $9.99 rebate…FREE
CryoStat $8.99…submit for $8.99 rebate…FREE
Smooth Move $3.69…submit for $3.69 rebate…FREE
Remember that $5-off-$25 printable coupon? Print that out.
Now here’s an idea of how you could work a regular priced item into this mix for a good deal. Let’s suppose the Pampers are $10 for a jumbo pack.
Buy 1 Pampers Cruisers $10
Buy 1 Pampers Wipes $2.50
Buy 1 Dulcolax Balance $9.99
Buy 1 Smooth Move $2.69
Subtotal: $26.18
Then, use the following coupons
Your $1/1 Rite Aid Pampers
Your $3/1 Pampers Cruisers Manufacturer’s coupon
$2/1 wipes coupon from 7/4 P&G
$4/1 Dulcolax Balance coupon from 5/16 SmartSource
$5-off-$25 printable coupon
Pay at the register: $11.18
Then, submit for the following rebates:
$9.99 Dulcolax Balance
$3.69 Smooth Move
Bottom line: profit of $2.50!! (not including any sales tax, of course!)
Amazingly, you will actually get a BETTER deal by buying additional items so you can use that $5-off-$25 printable coupon! Don’t believe me?
Imagine instead of the above scenario you bought:
1 Pampers Cruisers $9.99
1 Pampers Wipes $2.50
Subtotal: $12.49
Obviously, you couldn’t use the $5-off-$25 printable…
So after your $1/1 Rite Aid, $3/1 diaper, and $2/1 wipes, you’d pay $6.49. Maybe not a bad deal, but certainly not as good as making $2.50!
I hope my answer gave you a few ideas of how you could work your coupons at Rite Aid to buying what you need!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Please pass on to Lauren that ALL of my riteaid stores have had the big packs of pampers and other brands clearanced 50% off to 8.99. They’ve been like this for a couple weeks now. The clearanced shelves were looking bare but still at least 20 packs last time I went. They weren’t in the baby section…so maybe call ahead to see if they are at your store.
I hope you don’t take offense to this question, but I am wondering what you do with things you buy that your family isn’t able to use. I can see how buying the free after rebate items would make for great deals, but a lot of those things my family doesn’t use and I’m not sure what I would do with it.
No offense taken whatsoever – it’s a GREAT question! I’m lucky enough to attend a church that has a food pantry, and to my knowledge, they accept items such as these. Or – I’ll wait for a food drive or give it to a friend or family member I know who uses it. I recently had the pleasure of chatting with someone who sits on the board of a local food bank. He stressed to me that folks need items beyond regular groceries! So that’s another option as well.
In most cases I don’t generally advocate going around randomly buying stuff your family doesn’t need/use. However, there are times when it may actually make better sense to add items to your transaction to get what your family needs/wants most of all.
Does that help?
Thanks so much…I will have to check with our local food pantry to see if they can use other items besides food. I just got some really amazing diaper coupons in the mail so I will be on the lookout for some great deals at Rite Aid. Thanks for all the info. I love your blog…the presentation is very clean and organized and makes it very easy to follow!