My Personal $25 CVS Challenge

At the beginning of the year, I bought a $25 CVS gift card. My plan was to see how much stuff I could get over the course of several months (maybe a year?) using only the gift card, coupons & ECB's.

I spent the month of January staring at my gift card and my red CVS card, trying to figure out how to zero out my current ECB's so I could truly start from scratch. I never did find a solution :)

So what I've decided to do is use a different CVS card until I use up my ECB's on my 1st card, and then just get rid of the 1st card. You see, I've had 2 CVS cards for a while. Before you think badly of me, my husband's health insurance sent us a shiny white CVS card a few months back. They have some agreement with CVS that if we use that card, we get a discount (20%, maybe?) on CVS brand OTC medication. I have not been using it to routinely double up on all the good deals. First of all, the people who do this, I have no idea how they keep all those ECB's straight! I hear of people using 4 cards, and my head starts spinning. ECB's are card-specific, and there's no way I could keep all that straight! I've only bought 1 thing that was free after ECB's on my husband's card, and that was something that was actually for him. I think the rule is that each person in the household can have one anyways, so I don't think I've broken any laws. I still have about $36 in ECB's for my old card. I plan on buying my newspapers with them, plus a few random other things. But most of my buying will go on my new card.

But all new purchases will go on my shiny new white card. I'm going to try to maximize it so I get the most for my money. I'll keep you updated as to how it goes!