Stockpiling!

My last blog mentioned that my budget for 2010 would be $2500, and I've been going back and forth thinking about if that should include stockpiling or not. *For those (few, hehe) not familiar with stockpiling, it's basically buying in bulk when you find a GREAT deal such as $0.49 cat food, $0.39 razors or FREE shampoo).*

Anyway, I thought about it, and that budget should allow for some decent stockpiling, especially for Health & Beauty (HBA) items. I'm on a great roll with my CVS Extra Care Bucks (ECB), and with just an initial $20 investment, I've been able to roll my ECBs over the last month to include Glade, various shampoos including Dove, more razors, and most recently I rolled ECB's AND BOGO Gillette coupons into the Buy $25 get $10 ECB deal (though I did have to spend $0.69 oop, which is not bad for a $25 purchase!

I've been trying to get into Walgreens (WAGs) deals so I can roll Register Rewards (RRs), but with different stores making up their own rules on how customers can use their RRs, it doesn't seem worth it. The most common made-up rule I've heard is that you can only use one RR per TRANSACTION, which is ridiculous, and FALSE according to how their RR program works, but I hear more and more people saying their WAGs managers are now making up this rule. In my experience, however, when a cashier says this to me, and I tell them I'm fine with doing a separate transaction for all my items so I can use all my RRs... this rule is amended, but be aware of this if you are a regular WAGs shopper.

I already prefer CVS b/c at WAGs you can't use a coupon and an RR on the same item, a restriction that CVS does not have. Who wants to always have to worry about fillers? Not me. I am okay with shopping there when they have free shampoo. Most recently they did $2.99 Herbal Essences and $2.99 Aussie (both had $1/1 coupons out), where if you purchased them, you got $2 RR, which made them free. A redeeming quality about WAGs is that they do not have a rewards card, therefore their deals have no limits, unlike CVS, though, in order to do multiples of the same deal (and get multiple RR), you have to do different transactions which can be frustrating and time consuming, and the occasional cashier/manager will not let you do that. Definitely not for the "get-in-and-get-out" kind of shoppers.

Anyway, to sum up, I'm okay with the $2500 to include all my food, baby, pet, HBA, needs for the year, as well as to allow for stockpiling. I hope you guys follow me, as I will be posting all about it here!