Rolling the Rewards

Here are my recent escapades.
At CVS this week, I bought a gallon of whole milk, two packages of Oreos, two packages of Special K cereal, and two cosmetics items for my daughter which she selected.  I paid $1 cash and then received $3 in extrabucks.

At Rite Aid, I treated myself to my favorite Cadbury fruit and nut bar, 3 packages of colored notecards from the 50% off bin, and four 8 ounce bottles of sanitizing gel.  I paid 38 cents and received $4 back in  +UP Rewards.

And today at Walgreens, I found on clearance eleven 1.5 ounce snack packages of Blue Diamond Almonds Wasabi and soy sauce flavored (8 g protein, 50% Vit E, 25% Magnesium, 10% Calcium and 8% Iron).  In addition, I bought two gallons of distilled water, Halls Warm-ups apple cider flavor drops, and a small package of Nabisco cookies all for 31 cents and then received a $1 rewards coupon.

These shopping experiences were rare to me once before, but now I get the hang of it. I believe it is what the experts (those coupon queens) call "rolling" the rewards.   I use the extrabucks or rewards coupons from previous trips, apply them to current ones, making sure I buy more items that will also bring forth more rewards coupons to use for the next trip.  For example, the Rite Aid sanitizing gels were essentially free since I received $4 in +UP rewards, plus I paid them with previous +UP rewards.

Of course, I had to make an initial purchase of $18, a month ago, for example, to be able to have the Rite Aid +UP rewards to apply to the most recent shopping spree.  But with that initial purchase, I did buy a lot of products (shampoo, toothpaste, body wash) and food items.  The main thing to remember is to keep track of when these rewards expire, because once they do, it is like cash lost.