Coupons
For years, I absolutely refused to consider using coupons. I thought they were just way too much hassle for negligible benefit. I mean, who needs 25 cents off the lastest flavor of denture adhesive right?
Well it turns out that shopping with coupons can be a lot more rewarding than I thought. For example, yesterday I left the grocery store with $200 in groceries having spent only $39! And this morning I came home with $150 in Covergirl makeup FREE except for the cost of the sales tax.
The secret is to combine coupons for things you use with great sales. But who has time to sift through all the store ads looking for the best prices as well as clipping and sorting all your coupons? Fortunately, there are websites dedicated to finding these deals for you, free! They support themselves through hosting ads on their sites (like this site) or through affiliate programs with local newspapers. Here are some of those sites, though you may be able to find a more local one to suit your needs better.
- Dealcatcher
- Savvyshopper (specific to Utah)
- The Grocery Game (subscription based, but works in more areas)
Speaking of newspapers, the best and most abundant source of manufacterer's coupons is the Sunday paper. If you don't have a newspaper subscription yet, I would strongly consider getting one. A Sunday-only subscription is all you need (or several if you want multiple copies of the coupons) and many papers offer deals on multiple copies through deal-matching websites like Savvyshopperdeals.com. I paid $91 for my Sunday-only subscription for a year, and after the first month using it, I clearly made back that money many times over. You should also consider talking to your friends, family, and neighbors who may subscribe to the paper but never bother with their coupons. Many times you'll be able to score extra inserts from these people.
Another great coupon source is the one you're looking at right now. Yep, the internet. There are a lot of great sites with printable grocery coupons, often worth more than the ones you get in your Sunday ad. Sometimes you can print coupons straight from the manufacturer's site, like www.pillsbury.com, but it's often easier to use a site that compiles lots of online coupons. Here are some of my favorites:
One more option... If you want to take advantage of a specific sale over and over, consider buying a stack of the coupons for it from a source like Ebay or centsoff. Ebay is cheaper if you only want a few coupons, centoff is better, though, if you want a bunch because they charge a flat rate of $7.50 no matter how many coupons you order. If you recognize a sale you'll want to take advantage of at least several days before it ends, you can often get the coupons in the mail in plenty of time to use them. Proceed with caution however; Many of the best sales lead to the items going out of stock by the end of the first few days. Sometimes you can score big though. That was how I ended up with all that Covergirl makeup. I saw that Covergirl was buy one get one free at Rite Aid and when I used my coupon for buy one get one free Covergirl lip product, they came up free. So I ordered ten more of that coupon off Ebay for $1.50, got them a couple days later, and stocked up on twenty of the best Covergirl lip products for FREE after the sales tax.
Now, by far the biggest time commitment with coupons is clipping and organizing them, especially if you do get multiple inserts, but you can split this up into little ten minute blocks every day and it becomes quite manageable, even for the busiest person. You have to decide that big savings are worth a little time every day.
You'll need to come up with a way of organizing your coupons that works for you. Remember, you'll be keeping several months worth of coupons at any given time, multiplied by the number of inserts you get- that can be a lot of coupons to sift through looking for one you need if you don't have them organized in some way. One avid couponer I know uses a 2" binder with baseball card holders to separate the various categories of coupons. I keep my coupons in a legal size accordion file left over from my college days. There are only six divisions, so I use the file's dividers for broad categories like "health & beauty" and "refrigerated" and then further sub-categorize my coupons with large paper clips holding labels like "deodorant", "femenine hygiene", and "dairy". I also go one step further and put my coupons in order of soonest expiration date so that I can weed out the expired coupons more easily, but this is not strictly neccesary. Tailor your organizational system to the scale on which you plan to use the program, and to your preferences.
The best way to utilize coupons and sales is to stock up when you find a great sale so that you NEVER have to buy something at full price. Create a place to store food and supplies if you don't have one yet. Make it your goal to have at least a year's supply of food and neccesities on hand at any given time. That way, not only will you never have to pay full price for items you use on a daily basis... if something happened: to the world economy, to your breadwinner's job, a natural disaster, anything... you and your family would be ok and would even be able to help others in need for an extended period of time.
