I have been shopping for three days and I am almost glad it’s snowing so I can have a break.  I tried hard to talk myself out of my normal Sunday shopping trip yesterday, but I ended up going. It took me four hours, but I hit CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens and the weekly grocery shopping Wal-Mart trip.  I took pictures of the drugstore purchases last night but I don’t know if I’ll bother posting them. They weren’t terribly exciting.

Anyway.  On Friday, I went up to see my parents for the day, and while I was there, I went to Rite Aid.  It was kind of awesome.  I had two $20 Gift of Savings certificates and was worrying over  when I would use them–I have not had much OOP cost at Rite Aid lately.  One of them expired at the end of this month, too.  This is all to say that I had been planning on doing a Pampers deal to qualify for the first $50 requirement for the P&G Single Check Rebate.  My original plan was to buy them two at a time, add enough fillers each time to get to $20, and then use a $5/$20.  However, once I was in the store, I couldn’t find fillers and then I realized that it would be an excellent time to use those gift of savings, so I went ahead and did it in two transactions instead of three.  I “lost” five dollars that way, but I was able to use two $20 GOS certificates, and I didn’t really account for either one of them when I purchased stuff to qualify for them.  So, I did two identical transactions:

3 Pampers, 8.99
1 Angel Soft toilet paper, four-pack, .99 (needed to bring my total up in order to use the certificate)
1 bag of M&Ms, 0.50 (miscalculated* and threw these in at the end to get up to $20)

The $20 certificate went through, and the cashier said my total was $.83. I handed it to her, but then she looked at the screen again and said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and handed it back to me.  My total was NEGATIVE $.83.  She handed me cash back from the register!  It was awesome, especially since I then did the exact same transaction again.  I received a total of $1.66 to purchase six packages of diapers and eight rolls of toilet paper.. plus I’ll get back $2 in rebates and a $15 gift card. Then, I’ll use these two receipts to qualify for the P&G $100 Coupon book rebate. (Mail in $50 worth of receipts and get a coupon booklet over for $100 value. Last year it was $120, but beggars can’t be choosers, right?  Also, I didn’t get one last year and it was so frustrating to see these super deals using coupons I didn’t have!)

(Meanwhile, my dad checked out for me at the next register. He bought a nine-roll package of Charmin and a Bayer Contour. He paid $1.11. It was a pretty good day.)

I called it a rite of passage because I’ve seen lots of couponers talk about getting the random cashier to give cash back, but it’s never happened to me.

*Apparently the $5/$20 coupon, AND the $20 coupon, take off tax.  This makes a big difference when it comes to calculating exact totals!