Thursday, November 18, 2010

CVS vs. ALDI: Which is cheaper?

CVS can have some great deals, especially when you use coupons and earn Extra Care Bucks.  But do their deals beat ALDI?  I set out tonight to figure this out for one particular deal.

I was interested in the following CVS deal:
Spend $10 on the products below, get $3 ECBs:
Hellman's mayonnaise, 2/$6
Lipton tea bags, 2/$5
Skippy peanut butter, 3/$5
Ragu pasta sauce, 3/$5

I don't use much mayonnaise, so I planned to purchase 2 Lipton tea bags, 1 Skippy peanut butter, and 2 Ragu pasta sauces. 

I have the following coupons from the 11/14 RedPlum insert:
Save 60¢ on one Skippy
Save 60¢ on one Lipton
Save 50¢ on one Lipton (a different coupon)
Free pasta when you buy 2 Ragu (thanks to Cheryl at Simply CVS for alerting me to this coupon!)

I only have one copy of the insert as of now.  I could get more free coupon inserts, but tomorrow I won't be in the area where I typically pick them up.  And in the past, the Unilever coupons have not been in those inserts.  Also, I could not find any available printable coupons for these products.

So, if I get them at CVS, I would spend:
$10.00 for the products
- $1.70 for the coupons
- $3.00 ECBs
= $5.30 for 2 Lipton, 1 Skippy, 2 Ragu, and 1 box of pasta after coupons and ECBs

Or... I could buy these items at ALDI.  Using my ALDI price list, here are the prices of the equivalent items:

tea bags: $0.99
peanut butter: $1.39
pasta sauce: $1.19
pasta: $0.89

So to buy 2 boxes of tea bags, 1 jar of peanut butter, 2 jars of pasta sauce, and 1 box of pasta would cost:
2*$0.99 + 1.39 + 2*$1.19 + $0.89 = $6.64

So, the CVS deal is cheaper.  But note that if I didn't have coupons, it would be cheaper to buy the items at ALDI. 

So I'll be making a trip to CVS tomorrow!

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1 comments:

Nora@The Dollar Hollering Homemaker November 21, 2010 at 11:16 AM  

Thanks for the comparison.

We don't have CVS where I live but we do have walgreens where I can score some decent deals. But I love Aldi's because if I need to get something last minute and don't have a coupon for it 95% of the time it is going to be cheaper at Aldi's.

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