Thursday, April 29, 2010

Saving Money on Prescription



Handing my debit card to a pharmacist to pay for my prescription never excites me. But since I have learned a very valuable money saving trick, I am now more willing to hand over my debit card for a payment. Every Sunday I buy a newspaper and look through Target, K-Mart, CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens sales paper. I then look for store coupons that say something like, “Receive $25 dollars gift card for new or transferred prescription”. The coupon is clipped and stored in my coupon box until it is time for me to fill up my prescription. Last month I filled up my prescription at Rite Aid and received $25 gift card, this month I am planning to transfer my prescription to Target and receive $10 gift card. I hope that by the time third month rolls around K-Mart will put out a coupon allowing me to transfer to their store and receive $25 gift card. So you got the idea, you keep on transferring your prescription each month from store to store and before you know it is time to repeat the cycles again by transferring your prescription back to the very first store you initial filled it in. After I fill up my prescription at K-Mart, I plan to transfer it to CVS. Although CVS rarely puts out a coupon for a prescription, they take competitor’s coupons. The way it works is that you bring a coupon, last time I brought Rite Aid coupon that gave you $25 for transferred prescription. Manager must approve it (I did not have any issues with my coupon) and he or she will then hand you $25 gift card.

In a year I have accumulated many gift cards. The best part is that there has been times when a doctor prescribed a cold medicine that required me to pay only $3 co-pay and with a coupon I still received $25 gift card. I can redeem my gift card for anything in the store. You may say that you do not shop at K-Mart or CVS and would rather avoid the headache of transferring your prescription each month. Even though you may not shop at these stores, I know that you go out to eat or shop at department stores, so why not exchange your store card for a gift card of your choice. For example, I do not shop at K-Mart unless they have Double Coupon Event. I still transfer my prescription to K-Mart and then redeem my $25 dollars store gift card for $25 dollars gift card to Starbucks or Belk or Macaroni Grill. All the stores, CVS, K-Mart and Rite Aid have a huge variety of gift cards that you can chose from and buy with your store gift card. If you have to pay to fill up a prescription why not get paid back, only in a form of a gift card?! It is a win-win situation for you and the store.

How do you save on prescriptions?

4 comments:

  1. Hey girl...I LOVED your post on bare necessity...Come check out my challenge on my blog; it raises money for a good cause!! :-D
    ~ Marlie
    http://southernloves.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey girl, I've been doing this as well but my question is: "If I've had my prescription at CVS before, does that mean that technically it's not a "new prescription"? I've gone from CVS to Walgreens to Rite Aid to KMart but I'm not sure if I can go back to one of those and use the gift card coupon... thanks for all the good tips!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Judith,

    You can go back to CVS again after you have transferred your prescription elsewhere. I usually like to wait at least 4 months before transferring to the same store again. They want you business and won't turn you down! Since CVS no longer puts out "transfer prescription" coupons, you can use a competitor coupon (Rite Aid). Also don't forget that you can transfer your prescription to Target and receive $10 gift card! :)

    ReplyDelete