Rolling Your Rewards – What It Is & How To Do It

Stores that offer rewards for buying sale items are great places to shop. CVS offers deals where you can earn ExtraCare bucks, Walgreens offers register rewards and points, and Target offers gift card deals. These are spent just like cash at the stores and can mean cheap or really free items when you use them on sale items and with coupons. But what if you don’t have any to start with? Or what to do more than one deal? That’s where rolling your rewards come into play.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

Rolling your rewards simply means using the rewards you have to purchase something that will give you more rewards. It’s also a way of building up a supply of rewards if you don’t have any. Let’s take a look at all three stores to see how it would work.

Rolling CVS Rewards

CVS has weekly ExtraCare bucks (ECB) deals. They might have a deal like this one:

• Buy 2 Crest toothpaste, on sale for $1.99, Get back $2.00 ECB

You have a $1/1 Crest manufacture coupon so your purchase would look like this:

• Buy 2 Crest toothpaste  @ $1.98 each = total $3.98
• Use (2) $1/1 coupons
• Pay $1.98 out of pocket (OOP)
• Get back $2.00 ECB

Now you look for another deal. Revlon eyeshadow is on sale. Spend $10 on Revlon products get back $3.00 ECB. Again you have $1/1 manufacturer coupons. Here is what your deal looks like.

• Buy $10 in Revlon products – (3 items ) Total $11.50
• Use (3) $1/1 Coupons
• AND use your $2 ECB from earlier
• Pay $6.50 OOP
• Get back $3.00 ECB

That’s rolling your rewards.  With CVS there is always a limit on how many ECB deals you can do per item per sale. Usually, it’s a limit of one, dental care often it’s two and in some cases, with makeup, it can be up to 8. It will show on your receipt.

Rolling Walgreens Rewards

Walgreens has deals where you can earn register rewards (RR). They are similar to the ECB above except when it comes to rolling them it works a bit different. For example, if the same Crest was on sale at Walgreens – buy 2 get $2 in RR you can’t roll them and buy the same exact item if you want to get RR again. You can use the RR on the same Crest items but it won’t print again. RR, unlike ECB deals, don’t always have a limit on how many you can do but it’s usually 1 per transaction. But you have to work it like this. Let’s say they have the same Crest deal and they have Rockstar drinks on sale for $1 and you get a $1 RR back. Here is how you would roll those.

• Buy 1 Rockstar Drink – $1.00
• Pay $1.00
• Get back $1 RR

Now do this:

• Buy 2 Crest toothpaste  @ $1.98 each = total $3.98
• Use (2) $1/1 coupons
• Use $1/1 Rockstar RR
• Pay $0.98 out of pocket (OOP)
• Get back $2.00 RR

Then do the Rockstar again but make sure you have something in your cart to bring your total to $2.00. You can’t use the Rockstar RR to buy Rockstar if you want to keep getting RR. But you can use it for any other RR deal and they will print.

Rolling Target Rewards

Target rewards come in the form of gift cards so it makes them easy to roll and get great deals. In our Target scenario Pantene is on sale and if you buy 3 you get a $5 gift card. We have a nice coupon to go with that so our deal would look like this:

• Buy (3) Pantene Products  – $3.99 each total =$11.97
• Use $5/3 manufacturer coupon
• Pay $6.97
• Get back $5 gift card – this makes the only $0.65

Now you can roll that gift card. You can use it on another deal but you really like Pantene so you do this:

• Buy (3) Pantene Products  – $3.99 each total =$11.97
• Use $5/3 manufacturer coupon
• Use your $5 GC
• Pay $1.97
• Get back $5 gift card

Rinse, repeat – score!

Rolling rewards is a great way to score big. I love rolling gift cards at Target. It can make for some awesome deals.