As much as I love watching Extreme Couponing on TV, that show is wildly exaggerated. Many of the stores allow shoppers to film after hours, ignore stated coupon policies, even—gasp—use fraudulent coupons! (Everyone knows how big I am on ethical couponing.)

Is it possible to extreme coupon under normal conditions without breaking the rules?

Absolutely!!!

Here is an example of how I do it. I bought all of the items in the above pic at Walgreens this week for $4.00. Not per item, total! And that’s 53 items—26 bottles of AZO Cranberry Supplements and 27 boxes of Culterelle Probiotics.

I started with a $6.00 Register Reward from last week. I used that, plus $4.00 cash to buy the first box of Culterelle. I got a $10RR in return.

Because both items are exactly the same price and produce the exact same $10 Reward, all the subsequent items were free!

How did I do this? I did 53 separate transactions, over the course of 3 days. I’d pay for an AZO, then use the Reward to pay for a Culterelle, back and forth. Walgreens has a maximum of 20 transactions per day tied to each Balance Reward account. Usually, my store has a limit of 4 per item. This is at manager’s discretion. Because my store had boxes and boxes of extra product, I was allowed to buy as many AZO and Culterelle as I wanted until I hit the 20 per day mark. There were no extras on the other deals this week, so I skipped them.

Please keep in mind that this is an advanced couponing technique! I couponed for at least 2 years before I ever tried extreme couponing. If you do want to try this, here are a few tips:

1.   Use the register in Photo or Cosmetic. Don’t use the main register! It will back up the entire store. Shop early or late. If a line forms, let others take a turn, too.

2.   Obey the store limits. If the manager let’s me have extra, great! If not, I move on to another deal.

3.    Leave at least 1 or 2 on the shelf for the next shopper.

4.   Take some time to learn the Walgreens coupon policy. RR are a little tricky and most deals will require a filler item.

Extreme couponing can be awesome, but it’s time-consuming for sure. The key is always planning, but no plan is perfect. For a small financial investment and a large time investment, I now have a two-year supply of Probiotics. As for the AZO, that will be donated!

Have you ever tried extreme couponing?