Wowzers, I love Rite Aid

I skipped Rite Aid last week, because we were all feeling poorly, but I was really looking forward to this week. The kid is sleeping over with my parents, so my husband spent most of the morning scooping up the deals, together, alone, without having to worry about entertaining my little guy. It was great!

We went to five different Rite Aid locations, all within convenient driving distance of our home and the bank (where we had to go to deposit a check anyway) and the supermarket. Not every location had everything I wanted, especially for the Heart Healthy deal, and anyway, it's very unneighborly and thoughtless to wipe out the stock at any one store.

I started off with $42 in Ups, and my $20 Gift of Savings certificate. I hadn't shopped at Rite Aid at all since the Winter Rewards promotion started, so my balance towards the $20 Up was zero.

I'm not going to post each transaction, but my total cash out of pocket was $7.86. I now have $54 in Ups, and I have spent $89.07 towards the $100 for the Winter rewards program. I submitted the $19.99 Neuragen and the $7.99 Complete contact lens solution for SCR, for a total of $27.98 back in cash. I think I'm going to start picking up some SCR deals every week. I love the idea of getting a check back!

Here's what I got:

ten copies of the local paper
Maalox
Excedrin 24 ct
Complete contact lens solution
Afrin -- three bottles
Colgate toothpaste -- three tubes
Neuragen
Stayfree pads -- 16 packs of various types
Huggies diapers
Hartz dog biscuits -- 8 boxes
Viactiv calcium chews -- five boxes (so excited to try this product!)
Dixie plates -- two packages
Edy's ice cream -- eight cartons

The total dollar amount that I paid was $7.86, and the shelf price of all this stuff was $323.48, for a total savings of 97.5%, not factoring in Ups or SCRs. If I wanted to get more ice cream, four more packages would cost $11.96, but earn me the $20 Winter savings Up, plus four more $2 Ups for the ice cream itself. We're not huge ice cream eaters around here, though, so getting more for the sake of earning money seems kinda selfish. It is nice to have ice cream in the freezer, though, especially my husband's favorite kind. :) I have to check next week's ad scan and see if there's anything great in there, and if not then maybe I'll go back later in the week and pick up a few more cartons of mint chocolate chip.

Just to put it in perspective: I paid LESS for all that stuff, than that one package of diapers would cost, even on sale. I'm not a newbie at this, but that just never gets old for me, really.

We also stopped at ShopRite and picked up two pounds of Butterball ground turkey. After the 75c/1 coupon that they just put out, it was $1.53 for both packages. I foresee turkey chili in the near future. And, pretty cool: when we were checking out, the catalina machine spit out a coupon for a free box of Lean Pockets. Hey, thanks, Catalina Marketing!