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In my adulthood, I have always been a coupon clipper with varying degrees of intensity.

It’s always been fun to shop discount, thrift stores and yard sales or to find something my family needed at a deeply discounted price.
About a year ago, I started reading stories online about people going to CVS saving phenomenal amounts of money on a regular basis.

I read with skeptical interest. Most of our retail purchases are done at Walmart because I rarely run across prices that come close to theirs.

I never got into driving to several different places to save a few cents here and there. It seemed that any savings would be consumed by the extra gas money I would use.

A few months ago, CVS opened a new store on University Drive, an area my family passes several times a week as we come and go.

Once again, I thought back to what I had read about people saving lots of money by skillfully planning their trips each week.

With a CVS so close, it was a good time to give it all a try. I could play with it and see if it really did make a difference.

On a quick errand to our new CVS a few weeks ago, I noticed a red box on one of the end caps where you could scan your CVS card to obtain extra coupons to use instantly.

One coupon was for a $25 gift card with a new or transferred prescription. I used the coupon a week or so later when my son needed a prescription after oral surgery.

The day I received my gift card, CVS had a special going on: If you bought $20 of canned Coke products, at the sale price of $3.50 each, you could receive $10 back in Extra Care Bucks. I used my gift card to purchase the drinks, leaving me with $2.58 on my gift card and an ECB coupon for $10 to use on my next transaction.

A few days later, I purchased two Sure deodorants, a box of Carnation Instant Breakfast, two tubes of Crest toothpaste, a couple of bags of Reese’s peanut-butter cups and some candy marked 90 percent off from Valentine’s Day.

I used some manufactures coupons, the rest of my gift card and the $10 in ECB from my last visit, which covered 56 percent of the cost.

I spent a little over $11 in cash for the remaining balance. I also received two ECBs that totaled $6.99 for my next purchase.

When the new advertisement and coupons came out in the following Sunday’s newspaper, I prepared for my shopping trip in advance by choosing the items I wanted to buy, what coupons I needed and the best order to purchase the merchandise.

My best scenario would be to break my transaction down into four purchases:

• I bought three boxes of Lucky Charms for $10, using a $1 coupon and the $6.99 ECB. My out-of-pocket expense $2.01, and I received $5 in ECBs.

• I bought four packs of canned Coke products for $13. I paid using the $5 ECB that I received in the first transaction. My out-of-pocket expense was $8.54 for the Coke products, and I got $3 in ECBs.

• I bought Palmolive dish soap, two at $1.49 each. I used the $3 in ECBs to pay for the dish soap, which was adjusted down to $2.98. I had no out of pocket expense for this transaction but $2 in ECBs.

• I bought a tube of Crest Pro Whitening Toothpaste for $2.99 and paid using a 50-cent coupon and the $2 in ECBs from the previous transaction. My cost was 56 cents. I walked away from the store with another $2 in ECBs to use later that week.

The cashier at the University Drive CVS was nice and patient, totally understanding what I needed to do. He did not make me feel weird or cheap for breaking down my purchases into four transactions.

By the following Sunday, I had accumulated a total of $8 in ECBs by working out a few other transactions during the week as I continued to learn how this whole CVS thing works.

Since Sunday, I have brought home a total of $52.42 in merchandise from CVS for a total out-of-pocket expense of $5.88.

That is a savings of $46.54 — 89 percent off my total bill. All of the items were on sale and generated ECBs for future purchases.

Slowly, after only a few weeks of studying ads, clipping and printing more coupons than I have in the past, I am growing a nice stockpile of health and beauty aids that my family uses regularly. Each item has been bought at extremely discounted prices by the time ECBs, coupons and sale prices are applied.

Of course, we’ll still shop at other stores; we cannot buy everything our family needs at CVS. But with careful planning, it appears that shopping at CVS can make a difference as we attempt to stretch our hard earned dollars further each week.

Linda Vestal is a wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend living in Gibsonville. Contact her with comments or story ideas at lindavestal@triad.rr.com.