Not liking Walgreens Balance Rewards

I apologise for my lack of posts. Last week was a really busy week, so the weekend I decided to just relax and unwind. I don't do this often, so I thoroughly enjoyed hanging by the pool and doing absolutely nothing.

Let me just say how much I dislike the WAGS Balance Rewards. I figured I'd do a bit of shopping to use up that $85 in rewards that I have. My pre-tax total came to $14.64 and I figured I'd just use $14 in rewards. WRONG! I could only use $10. What the heck?! But that's not all. When I checked my account afterwards, I noticed that instead of having a $75 balance, I only had $70 balance because my points value has dropped below the threshold for the next available reward. Insert expletive here. I'm not a happy camper. Walgreens has the worst rewards program!! Not even Rite Aid, with their new program, is this bad. CVS has (hands down) the best reward program. No waiting 24 hours to use rewards. Its easy to split rewards and transactions and do them back to back. Their program works, because they don't keep making ridiculous changes to it. As a serious couponer, I've shopped all 3 drugstores regularly, for the past 10 years and CVS still gets my vote as being the BEST!

So now I have to figure out some ways to redeem the rest of my rewards (you can only use a maximum of $40 mind you) on items that earn cash back.

I've done my first (non-grocery) shopping for the month this past weekend. BBW had the Aromatherapy items on sale for $5 and a 10/40 q. I always stock up on these, because the lotion helps me sleep. When I have trouble sleeping, I just rub a tiny amount on my forearms and sleep right through the night. So I bought 8 body wash and lotions, used my $15 gc and paid $23.15 oop.

Next up was Kohls. I only received a 30% off mystery discount and was able to knock out another Christmas gift. Here's what I bought

1 x gift
7 x Sonoma tees for myself
Pair sandals DS
Swim shorts DS
2 x Long sleeve shirts DS
2 x 6pk washcloths
4 items to resell (this should bring around $60-70)
Used $106.21 gcs and paid $3.96 oop

Earned $20 Kohls cash and $5.92 Ebates and should get another $5 Y2Y reward. So long story short. If I find anything good with the KC, then the items I'm reselling will pay for the entire shopping order.

I bought 7 tees, because they were $3.50 each after discount and they are the best quality. I bought some 2 years ago and am still wearing it, so these will go into my stockpiling closet for when I need it. When I find a good quality item at a rock bottom price, I like to stock up.

I also redeemed for a $25 Kohls gc (IGC) and $50 Walmart (Ibotta)

I purchased DH's Father's Day gc at RA last week and earned $16 BC, that will be used for household cleaning and/or HBA items.

Today I did a bit of grocery shopping. First stop was Sams for some rotisserie chicken. I bought 2, because there's no way I'm cooking this week. It's way too hot. 90s is too much heat for me.

Sams

2 rotisserie chickens
1 Box fully cooked beef burgers
40 ct Case water
Daves Killer bread
Bag of BLT Lays
2 Gallons Vinegar

OOP $41.51

I've heard rave reviews about the bread. DH tried a slice and said it's not as good as South African bread (we eat purer foods there), but it's really good. So Dave's organic bread it is for us in future. And yes, I'll pay more for better quality food.

The Lays was a splurge. This flavor was discontinued a few years ago, so I was very happy to see that it's available for a limited time again.

Meijer

They have a 10/$10 get 11th item free sale this week, but we didn't need much

5 x Avos
2 x 1lb carrots
3 x Bella mushrooms
1 x Cantaloupe (free item)

3lbs Bananas
Green onion
Red onion
4 lbs Sweet onions
1.69 lb Apricots
16 oz Jenny O ground turkey
Fiber One cereal

Less $1.50 Jennie O q and 50c Meijer store qs

OOP $31.02 Eaned $2.10 Ibotta (85c Jennie O, 25c any item, $1 monthly bonus)

Total OOP today : $72.53 and earned $2.10 back. So $70.43 for this week's groceries thus far.

The Jennie O is 20% off this week, so $3.75 per package. I used a $1.50 IP and earned 85c Ibotta. That makes it $1.40 per package. I pay a little over $13 for 5 lbs at Sams. I'm gonna print more qs from our other computers and do this deal again once it resets. 5 lbs will then cost me $7. Almost half of what I would pay at Sams. The downside is that Meijer only accepts 2 like couponers these days and you can only redeem the Ibotta once per day. So I'll buy 2 packages on Wednesday and another 2 on Friday.

The apricots cost 5.05! (gasp). I was really tempted to just have it removed, but I really wanted it. I grew up eating all sorts of tropical fruit (not even sure if apricot is considered tropical) like mangoes, pineapple, passion fruit/granadilla , guavas, apricots. So whenever I find these items I treat myself to them, but I was NOT happy with that price.

Dinner's this week:

Today : Chicken, potato salad, carrott/pineapple salad, brocolli
Tuesday : Chicken quesadillas, refried beans, salad
Wednesday : BLT or BSAT lol... cause I use Bacon, spinach, avo, tomato tater salad, baked beans
Thursday : Chicken wraps and choose your own sides
Friday : Burgers, baked potatoes, baked beans
We dine out weekends.

Now I need to go make my drugstore shopping lists. I also need to hit Dollar Tree for newspapers, cause I didn't get any yesterday.