How You Asked!! (Post to Karen)

First things first, you can't live in Italy!!!

Then, you have to stock pile coupons. The commissaries overseas let you use coupons up to 6 months after they expire. I have a ton if you want me to mail them to you. You need to save the coupons until the item goes on sale and then use it. But, because your limited to what stores you can shop at it will be harder.

ECB's or Easy Care Bucks from CVS Pharmacy and RR's are Register Rewards from Walgreen's. Both of these stores give those as money to use toward your next purchase.

So, the trick is to have a coupons, get the item on sale, and hopefully get rewards back. You can stack 2 coupons for one item if you have a manufacture coupon and a store coupon.

Example from my trip to CVS today:
2- Nature Bounty's Vitamins- CVS put them on sale for Buy 1 Get 1 Free and I had 2 coupons for $2 off each item. CVS allows you to use a coupon on the free item still, some stores do not. So, they ran up as $9.18, minus B1G1 ($4.39), minus coupons ($4.00), total out-of-pocket was $.79 and they gave me $2 in ECB's.

2- Crest White strips Trial Size- I had 2 coupons for $7.00 off any crest white strip so when I saw the trial size for $5.99 I was excited. P&G (Procter and gamble) allow you overage on there products if you roll it into another P&G item so keep reading to see what I did. So these two items for completely free. (Who cares if they are trial size when they are free. I just got 2 weeks of white teeth!)

2- Swifter Products- CVS put these items on sale and I have coupons. So, I bought the Sweeper Starter Kit for $7.99 and the Duster Kit for $6.99 but used a coupon for a free duster when you buy a sweeper the cashier took off $7.99 instead of $6.99 thought). Then, the roll over from the crest white strips work since swifter is a p&g product. So, $14.98 minus $7.99 from coupon, minus $2.02 from white strips, total out-of-pocket was $4.97 and they gave me $5 in ECB's.

24pack Nestle Water- This was on sale for $4.49 and I had a $1 off coupon. Who can't use water. I paid $3.49 out of pocket and got back $1 in ECB's.

Total for my trip:
Product- $46.93
Savings- $38.18
Total Out-of-Pocket - $8.75
Total ECB's earned for next week- $8.00

So, next week I will have a way lower out-of-pocket because I can use my ECB's. To bad I didn't have any this week.

Anyway, this is a long post to try and explain something you can't really do right now, but this is how I am doing it.

Let me know if you would like coupons and I'll send them your way. Just using them at the commissary I save a lot of money and get some things free still. They allow overage and Internet printed coupons, at least at my commissary. Internet printed coupons are awesome so watch for them. I'll post some links if you want them.

Last week at the commissary I got 2 boxes of broccoli and cheese and 3 packages of kotex and paid $.79.

Hope this helps. what other questions do you have. I can explain the rebate program for you but it is for Walgreen's or rite aid if your interested.