Couponing 101

For those of you who don’t know, couponing can save you a lot of money. I have heard people say “what is saving forty cents going to do for me?” If you use coupons enough and fallow my simple rules, you’ll have lots of extra money to put in the bank in no time.

GATHERING COUPONS

First of all, you have to gather multiples of the coupons you need. You can do this several different ways. The easiest way is to get coupons out of the Sunday paper. What I usually do is buy one copy of the paper and if there are several good coupons, I will buy several more copies of the paper. My city sells the Sunday paper for seventy five cents each so obtaining multiple copies of the Sunday paper is not too expensive. Once I get multiple copies of the paper, I group like sheets and start cutting. I make separate piles for the coupons I want and the coupons I don’t want.

I print coupons from the internet. There are several websites to do this on. I will list them at the end of my article. Not all grocery stores accept internet coupons because people tend to use them in a fraudulent manner, but some stores do.

I joined some internet groups on yahoo. Each group does different things. If you go to yahoo.com>groups>search for couponing, you should get a list of results and you can start there. In some groups, we post a wishlist and people will send us the coupons we need. Sometimes you can trade the coupons you don’t want for the coupons you do want. You can also join a coupon round robin or train. In this type of group, a list is compiled of the round robin or train riders and it is mailed to the first person on the list. That person takes out the coupons they want and replaces them with coupons they don’t need and so on.

You can also find coupons in stores. There are blinky coupons you will find in red machines attached to shelves, wine tag coupons you will find around bottles of wine if your grocery stores sell wine in store, Catalina’s which print out of a coupon machine at the register and lastly, pads of various coupons from the manufacturer found in various areas of the store.

The last place you can obtain coupons is from the manufacturer. Pay them a compliment, complaint or just simply ask for coupons. Some companies will send them and some won’t.

ORGANIZING COUPONS

Next you need to organize the coupons you have. There are a few different ways to do this.

Accordion Organizer Method
Grocery stores and discount stores like Target and Wal-Mart sell small accordion files that are called coupon organizers. These have several slots for you to name. Label each slot something different. For example, in my organizer, I have sections for bread and cereal, drinks, refrigerated items, meat, toiletries, cleaning, and so on. Only you can determine how you label your sections since it will be you digging through your file looking for coupons.

Binder Method
The binder method is a little more complicated but gives you better access to your coupons. You would need a binder and baseball card sheets plus tabbed dividers. On the dividers, you could use them to separate your coupons alphabetically or by category. Whatever is easiest for you. Remember, these methods are just suggestions. There are no right and wrong ways to organize your coupons. To start, put two baseball card sheets after every divider. You store one coupon in one section of the baseball card sheet. When you are in the store, you can flip to the category or letter you need and find your coupons easily.

I would suggest filing your coupons every time you get them so they do not build up. You will not be able to save money if your coupons are not organized.

MATCH YOUR COUPONS WITH STORE SALES

When your store ads arrive at your home, you will scour them and match up your sales with your coupons. The idea is to stockpile. If you stockpile, you won’t have to run out at the last minute and pay for things full price. By shopping this way, you can cut your grocery bill in half or even more. It just depends on how dedicated you are to couponing.

If your store doubles coupons (the meaning speaks for itself-a fifty cents coupon would become a dollar-check with your store on their policy) you can save even more. Say you have a coupon for fifty cents off of Suave shampoo and Suave shampoo is ninety nine cents and your store doubles, you would get the item for free because the coupons is fifty cents and your store will double it another forty-nine cents.

Another key to saving money is to determine how much you are willing to pay for a product and stick to it. For example, I’m not willing to pay more than $4 for a 12 pack double roll or 24 regular roll of toilet paper. The toilet paper has to be quality too. I’m not talking about the store brand. When I catch it on sale I pull out my coupons and stock up. I buy 4 or more at a time. It would be rare that I have to run out and buy toilet paper because I am out. I do this with baby supplies, food, and virtually anything that my family needs and uses coupons for.

Now that you have an idea on how to save money, you are ready to test the waters. Everything may not make sense in the beginning and you may not save that much money, but with a little practice, you’ll be saving and stockpiling in no time!