CVS- A Year of Savings

This morning I got out my CVS receipts to review what I had saved and spent for the year. My first CVS trip was right before Christmas 2009, so I conveniently have one year of data to analyze (ah, takes me back to college to think of analyzing some numbers for my little CVS experiment).  The nice thing about CVS is that they print the spending and savings on the receipts so you don’t have to go back and add anything up.

Results
Winter 2010 Spending-$145.59
Spring 2010 Spending-$107.86
Summer 2010 Spending-$117.44
Fall 2010 Spending-$127.67

Total Spending: $498.56
Total Savings: $1,635.96
Percent Saved: 76.6%

Discussion
I took a quick look through the first six months and found at least $37 of Coca-Cola 12 packs. Some receipts could have been missing if I sent them in for rebates so there may have been even more Coca-Cola (I don’t bother making myself a copy). I also spent $20 on Zhu Zhu Pet stuff right before Christmas (probably the largest Out of Pocket transaction). I wanted to keep looking at the receipts, but decided to not get too distracted by it. I am pretty happy with the numbers. I know shopping at CVS has definitely helped me cut down on my monthly Target/Wal-Mart/Grocery budget. Since it is New Year’s Eve, my CVS resolution for next year…. keep quarterly spending to $100 or less.

I also would like to add that, imo, CVS “regular” prices are a bit steep so in the calculation of amount saved I would knock off a few hundred dollars. For example, if I had bought all the stuff at Wal-Mart I would have saved some money versus shopping at CVS. Does that make sense? It is too late to be typing this up!

I am contemplating switching cards (having Bill sign up for one) to see if I can get better coupons from the Coupon Spitter Outer Thingy.  I miss those $3 off $15 or $5/$20 coupons. Since I used up quite a few ECB on my last shopping trip, I am down to $9.  I could easily spend those and start using a different card.  If anyone reading has switched cards before, leave a comment to let me know how it worked out.

Here was my last shopping trip.  Spent about $23, the Vanicream was $13.99 and the vitamins around $8 (no sale, no coupons).  The Vanicream is my new discovery for Liam’s eczema – working great so it is totally worth it!  Unfortunately, this falls into Winter 2011 spending, so I have a challenge to keep this quarter at $100.  But, it wouldn’t be any fun if there wasn’t a bit of challenge to it, right?