Drug Store Deals-Ten Week Study

So I am going to conduct a ten week study of drug store deals at the three major chains (CVS, Rite-Aid, and Walgreens). This is an attempt to track the supposed super deals people claim to get at big chain drugstores. Now I, personally, have gotten some stellar deals at these three stores over the past six months or so. But this is a concerted effort to get deals while limiting the total cash outlay.

Generally I have gotten some pretty good deals at drugstores over the past year and I am getting much better deals than I was nine months ago. But this is a study specifically to track and analyze deals and cycles both for myself and to demonstrate that anyone, with effort, can stretch their money at the major chains.

Each store will get its own individual page, so check the tabs at the top of the main page for a corresponding link. The page will contain a weekly review of the items purchased, how much they cost, the total actual cash outlay, and weekly a running total of retail cost, savings, reward dollars used and unused, and the total cash outlay to date. There will also be a short explanation of each stores rewards program and an explanation of how they work.

This is intended as a ten week project. But I may extend it to twelve weeks (since that is essentially a quarter and would give a potential guesstimate of a years possible savings. Depending on feedback, and success, I may also decide simply to track through the end of the year (about twenty weeks)

There will be a quick overview on the main page each week summarizing which store was the best bet for the week both for me personally and overall.

A few words about the project. You should be, as I would, skeptical since this is tailored to my family (me, my wife, three kids, and a dog). Individually my plan is unlikely to be right for the population in general, though some deals will translate to everyone (toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, etc.) The other concern is what I like to call “savings inflation.” This is where, especially when you see these studies as news caps on morning news programs, the products purchased are chosen to maximize the appearance of savings (through reward dollars, rebates, store sales, and coupons). You see numbers like $114.27 retail for 19.22. This is misleading since the total cash outlay could be anywhere from $19.22 to $114.27. Twenty bucks for a hundred bucks of retail priced products is a great deal. But a hundred bucks for a hundred twenty in retail with seventy-five in reward dollars doesn’t look so pretty.  Look for my discussion of reward dollars, their uses, and risks which will be posted around the end of the month.

These are simple examples but my point is the breakdown becomes the most important aspect of the study not how much I paid, how many reward dollars I got back, or the retail price of the goods. Individually they teach us little but collectively there is a lot to be learned about shopping at drugstores. My goal is to get as much useful stuff as possibly while trying to minimize how much actual cash I spend.
Thus I’ve established a few ground rules.

• The products must be purchased from the pool of $250 I have specifically set aside for this project.
• I can spend up to $25 a week with one exception.
• At the end of  the period the unspent amount of the cash allowance will be deposited in my ING account (so the less cash I spend the better)
• No savings inflation
• I can only purchase products that appear useful to my situation ( so no contact lens solution for me even though CVS often offers rewards dollars to make it cost essentially only the tax)
• I Will not buy something just because the rewards program makes it essentially free (so no photo lab stuff even though CVS often uses reward dollars to get you to try them out)
• I Will not buy products, regardless of the deal, if it exceeds my personal stockpile rules (which generally is about six months of a specific product but at five of us we use a lot of stuff in six months)

So we’re going to see what kind of deals I can come up with over the next ten weeks. I do not expect to end up getting 90% of retail which I see many claims for in similar studies. But I expect to get some decent bargains and watching this you should see how you can use these deals to your personal advantage to slash costs on everyday necessities.