Walgreens this week: Why are prices always higher where I shop?

I went to Walgreens with my transactions planned out, as I detailed for you on Saturday. But when I got to the first store, I discovered that the Children’s Tylenol was $5.29, not $4.49, which was the price I’d used in my calculations. Since I was only buying the Tylenol for my stockpile and not because I needed it immediately, I decided it wasn’t worth it at that price. So I had to adjust my transaction, and ended up with the following:

Transaction #1:
1 Dove Men+Care $5.99
1 Super Poligrip $2
3 Kleenex 89 cents each
2 Valentine’s pencils 20 cents each with in-ad coupon

- $1.50/1 Dove Men+Care printable coupon (registration required)
- $1/1 Poligrip from 1/3 RP
- 50 cents/3 Kleenex from 1/3 SS
- $6 RR + $2 RR from last week

Paid: 6 cents + tax
Received: $6 RR for Dove + $2 RR for Poligrip

I got the pencils instead of the Disney Activity Pads because the store was out of those. The pencils were cheaper so I didn’t mind too much. The store didn’t have many Men+Care, so I didn’t want to buy another one there right away. Instead, I headed to another store, hoping that their Tylenol would be $4.49. It was $4.99, which was a little better than $5.29 - I stood there in front of the shelf for a minute or two, punching numbers into my cell phone’s calculator, but since I only had a $7 RR to work with, and maybe another $2 if I didn’t buy another Poligrip, I decided it still wasn’t worth it. Especially when I could get really cheap Kleenex again. So my second transaction looked a lot like my first one, only I needed one less filler (because I was using only one RR) and had to pay a little more out of pocket:

Transaction #2:
1 Dove Men+Care $5.99
1 Super Poligrip $2
3 Kleenex 89 cents each
1 Valentine’s pencils 20 cents with in-ad coupon

- $1.25/1 Dove Men+Care from 1/31 RP
- $1/1 Poligrip from 1/3 RP
- 50 cents/3 Kleenex from 1/3 SS
- $7 RR from last week

Paid: $1.11 + tax
Received: $6 RR for Dove + $2 RR for Poligrip

In sum, I paid $1.17 + tax and have $16 in RR for my next transactions, and got cheap Kleenex and better-than-free men's body wash.

The full ad for the next two weeks doesn’t seem to be available, so I’m not sure if there will be good opportunities to roll the RRs. However, as I’ve said before, having RRs (with their relatively short 2-week expiration date) can stress me so I don’t mind not rolling them if I’m paying a good price for things I want or need.