Places vying for your business, tons of stores offering you ridiculous deals and pencils going for a penny for a pack of 10! This is the time of year to shop around a little and get some amazing deals on school supplies before summer ends. Sure, you’re thinking pools and BBQs not school and homework but if you procrastinate you’ll have to pay full price and ya’ll know I hate doing that and wouldn’t want you to either. Here’s my top 7 list on what’s free, where and how.
1.CVS has already offered a few items for FREE after Extra Care Bucks and will continue the trend as time goes on if last year is a good indication. As well as having items that are free after rebate, they also offer huge discounts on other school items to fill your book bag. To use the program you’ll need to sign up for a free loyalty card which you can easily obtain instore.
2.Walgreens is another store that has FREE products after rebate. Using the Register Rewards program, last year I was able to get plenty of pens and pencils for just the price of tax and with very little effort. This year they’ve already had free markers and other deals.
3. Office Depot offers items like $.01 and $.05 glue sticks in addition to offering FREE hand sanitizer, pens and paper through their Worklife Rewards rebate program. When you purchase the items using the rewards, you’ll pay out of pocket and then receive money back in the form of an Office Depot credit with about 3 months expiration.
4.Office Max has a MaxPerks rewards program through which they offer FREE items like folders, binders and paper and also slash their prices to crazy amounts like $.10 hand sanitizers. To use the program, get a free loyalty card instore or online and make sure you give it to the cashier with your purchase. Teachers can get added perks when using it.
5.Staples is no different and they also offer mail in rebates to get you more FREE items. Their rebates are so easy they’ve even called them Easy Rebates and can be done online in a couple of minutes. They also offer heavily discounted school supplies like an 8 pack of pencils for $.01.
6.There are other stores out there such as Walmart, Target, Kmart and Meijer all offering hugely discounted prices on supplies hoping that you do your shopping sooner rather than later.
7. The Dollar Store. Sure, it may not be where you thought you’d buy school supplies and they don’t do backpacks for $1 but local dollar stores are treasure troves when it comes to finding inexpensive products and most of them have aisles of school supplies all for $1 or less.
All these stores have limits on them per customer and other exclusions but it’s usually worth it, especially for the freebies.
Before you run to the pool or the beach, you need to grab some cheap school supplies.
