Couponers....help me out!
 

K - after watching the crazy coupon people on TLC lately, I'm interested in starting doing coupons again..and in a bigger way than just the every once in a while ones. Have any good sites that I can get started on to learn about a better system - or do you have your own advice?

I do know we don't have double coupons past .30 cents, and no triple past .25, so those double .75 coupons don't happen here anymore :(

none of my stores double at all. I follow local bloggers that do matchups for my grocery stores here and I do my lists off that. I do a lot of printable coupons, b/c I don't have trouble with them here, your stores might not take them. Most things run in a 3 month cycle, although right now I do not have the space to stockpile that much. What are your local grocery stores, Darcy? I can find you some bloggers that do matchups for your stores.

I should say, however.. I do much more cvs/walgreens shopping than i do grocery coupons. I haven't paid for toothbrushes, deodorant, body wash or shampoo in about 3 years.

We only have one grocery store here, and its a local chain (HEB), they were able to price all the national chains (Kroger & Albertsons) out of the market. We do have Target and Walmart that also have groceries but there is not incentive for doubling coupons. :-(

Target, though, you can use a manuf coupon and a store coupon on the same item.. i shop some groceries at target if there's a matchup for them.

Our price chopper here always doubles coupons, so that helps. But there are a couple sites with good coupons- couponbug.com and the p&g brandsaver sites.
I always end up getting free toothpaste, yogurt, and lots of other stuff almost free with double coupons and the sales at PC. (they seem to run the sales on the same items that there are coupons for the same week)

We have Kroger, Tom Thumb, CVS and Walgreens

Darcy - check out www.iheartsavingmoney.com

Kroger - http://www.hotcouponworld.com/forums...xas-louisiana/
http://www.livefabuless.com/search/label/Kroger
http://faithfulprovisions.com/category/kroger/
http://www.frugalcouponliving.com/category/kroger/ (she has printable lists, but may not be your region, I'm not sure)

Tom Thumb - http://dealiciousfinds.com/supercenters/tom-thumb-101/

Walgreens - http://wildforwags.com/

CVS - http://www.iheartsavingmoney.com/ind.../category/cvs/

I haven't done a whole lot of couponing lately but these are some of the coupon blogs I follow on FB (they all have websites/blogs too). Here we only have Dillon's, Homeland, Walgreen's, Target and Walmart so not a whole lot of stores to choose from.

http://www.facebook.com/TheKrazyCouponLady
http://www.facebook.com/Hip2Save
http://www.facebook.com/CouponsAndFreebiesMom
http://www.facebook.com/MomsNeedToKnow
http://www.facebook.com/LifeasMOM

I use hot coupon world to know what sort of deals are going on and then I have a couple blogs in my reader that tell me what the deals are at my local stores. My safeway doubles everything to a $1 so it is a big incentive to shop there.

Do you have any links for Giant Eagle? TIA!!

Ok what am I missing on TLC? I soooo need to get into coupon clipping. Darcy, have you seen this website: http://www.mydallasmommy.com/. They post ALOT of local stuff and will often give the rundown on the local chains mentioned above.

moneysavingmom.com also has matchups, etc for most stores.

Yep I sure do :)

http://www.savinginakron.com/categor...-2/giant-eagle

http://press.discovery.com/us/tlc/pr...eme-couponing/

Thanks for all the sites, folks. I surely appreciate it!!!

I was going to say The Krazy Coupon lady too... she has a blog that I link up in my Google Reader... she has instructions for the hard core.

I don't have a place around me that doubles either, well, Copps/Pick 'n Save has promotions once in awhile... so not much help either. Also the cheapest grocery store in my area does not accept coupons printed off the internet. :thumbdown:

One word of advice that I got from a checker is that if the internet coupon isn't going through when they ring it, to have the checker cover up the longer UPC code... then it will scan.

Love Hip2Save and pinchingyourpennies.com :) Good luck.

Fair warning. This is going to be a VERY long response.

Currently, I am not actively couponing the way I used to, since I live with my parents and have few expenses. I WAS actively couponing and got many things for free. I'll give you what worked for me, and what didn't.

1. Many couponers will tell you that you need to get 10 papers a week. No. Get what you'll use. I found that 2 papers per week was enough for me. I clipped what I would use. I then saved my inserts for what I didn't think I would use, and traded coupons with other coupon people I knew, or in online forums. For example, I'd find cat food coupons in the paper. I would give those to a friend of mine with cats, and she would give me dog coupons from her paper. I had a dog, but no cats, she had a cat but no dog, we were able to trade. I didn't have a baby, so baby food coupons went to a parent with a baby, but a coupon I would use that she wouldn't would go to me (it usually varied).

2. You can also dig through recycling bins, or ask people who buy papers and don't coupon to save you the insert. Sometimes you'll find more, sometimes you won't. If you find that there is a coupon that you really really want in a paper, buy an extra. I only buy 2 papers regularly, as I said, but if there was a coupon for $4.00 off a specific Gilette product and it was on sale that week in a circular, you better believe I was buying 5 or 6 papers if I could get the Gilette kit for pennies... it would give me extras of other usable coupons, too.

3. Get a system that works for you to organize your coupons. Mine was a binder. There was a front pocket that had scissors, a memo pad, pens, a calculator, and other supplies I found I needed on a regular basis. Then, I had dividers for each category (Hygiene, Restaurant, Paper goods, Frozen Food, etc etc etc). Each section had it's fair share of baseball card plastic sleeves and photo plastic sleeves. Small coupons went in the baseball one, larger coupons in the photo ones.
Each kind of coupon (for example, duracell batteries) go in a pocket TOGETHER. So I have all of my duracell coupons in one pocket, all my colgate in one pocket, etc etc etc. I put them in order of expiration date, expiring soonest in the front, farther away in the back. If there's a great sale, I may use them all at once. If not, I may use them as needed.

4. Clear out expired coupons regularly. There are some programs where you can mail expired coupons to military families, who can use these coupons for a certain amount of time at the base shops... you can google for more information about sending them coupons you didn't get to use in time.

5. Keep a notebook of your store's prices. Most will go in a cycle-- Macaroni and Cheese may be $1.08 one week, and two weeks after that be $0.79. If you track an item you regularly buy long enough, you'll be able to predict when a sale is.

6. Sign up for programs like bzzagent, vocalpoint, and shespeaks. Often, not only will you get free samples, but you'll get coupons. Occasionally, they are coupons to get an item completely free! My mom got invited to a Chex campaign on a website from the manufacturers of Chex product-- not only did she get multiple coupons for $2.00 off Chex, but she also got a free mixing bowl and a $10.00 gift card to go purchase other supplies to make Chex mix. Not only did that $10.00 help us get ingredients not on the list, but at Target, Chex went on sale to $2.00 a box... which meant her $2.00 off coupons made it FREE! She also participated in a campaign with BzzAgent, who sent her coupons for $2.00 off any 2 items from the Glade Winter Collection. Target just marked these down, meaning candles that were between $2.00 and $4.00 were now only $0.48 each after that coupon-- we were able to get 6 candles, 2 scented oil warmers with a candle in each, and 8 scented warmer refill candles for less than $6.00.

7. Stack promotions when you can. A little over a year ago, I got a buy that I am still proud of to this day. I went to Target and they had Special K bars on clearance. I had multiple $1.00 off coupons from the manufacturer. Target was running a promotion that if you bought 4 boxes you got a $5.00 target gift card. Plus, Kellogs was running a promotion that said if you bought 10 boxes in a single transaction, they would mail you a $10.00 rebate check. After rebate, gift cards I received (which I paid for my other stuff on a second transaction), and coupons, I got 12 boxes of Special K bars for under $3.00. TOTAL. Not per box. TOTAL. If your store has a catalina printer (one of those printers by the register that spits out coupons), the printed coupons would be a "store coupon." In case you didn't know, you can use both a store coupon AND a manufacturer's coupon (like what you get from the newspaper, like the P&G brandsaver or whatever) on the same item... we had a manufacturer's coupon for Kibble's and Bits, and at the store, it spit out a coupon for the same product... we applied both coupons to the purchase and saved $3.00 off, which was about half off!

Anyway, those are my fast tips. Hopefully they help a little bit!

I follow The Krazy Coupon Lady for all my couponing. My advice would be to definetly do all your toiletry shopping at CVS. We don't have a CVS here so I do Rite Aid, but the drug stores always have amazing deals on toiletries. I never buy toiletries anywhere else anymore.

I would LOVE to have a rite aid. They have awesome awesome deals. I wish I had one.

Some of my fave sites are already listed but others I find really helpful
are
www.southernsavers.com
www.couponing101.com
www.TotallyTarget.com
www.KingdomFirstMom.com (she does the $scenarios for the drugstores but you already know that gig and how to roll ur bucks from there it seems)

I also order coupons when I don't get many in my area since coupons vary region to region~I prefer to order the whole inserts from www.wholecouponinserts.com

oh yeah~I forgot to add to get the All You magazine from Walmart (only place it's on the shelf) cuz it's loaded with coupons.

At CVS get ya one of those leaf thingys at the register~they are 99 cents I think but after 4 visits (or scans) it gives you an extra Extra Care Buck.

I don't know how you store your coupons but I use the binder method and I love it eventhough it takes me more time to cut and stuff but I have to drive a good 45 mins to where I am shopping and I want my coupons with me if I find a good deal. Back in Novemeber I spent just a little over $500 in food and tolietries (this included Thanksgiving) and the merchandise I brought into my home was valued a little over $1500.

here is my coupon binder...the pink case is where I keep all my drugstore bucks, extra loyalty cards etc.
http://i56.tinypic.com/1491bh2.jpg

I'm slowly trying to get on board with couponing. I've read through some of the blogs and sites posted last week. Some new ones you girls suggested so I'll go through those.

I'm getting my the organizational stuff this weekend along with a couple of newspapers.

Let's see how this goes!

I try to do this but I find it so overwhelming most of the time!

I try to coupon, but we're limited on stores here (we have a regional grocery store-they have online coupons & a Wal-Mart).

One of my goals this year is a pretty tight budget..

Wow! This is great. We just started couponing. We live on an overseas base, so THANK YOU to those who send your coupons into whatever programs ship us coupons. We have bins with bags of coupons at a couple places on base and for about two weeks, we'd take a bag sort what we wanted, then return the bag for a new one. (we can use our coupons six months past expiration.)

I love the binder idea. that would make it so much easier than the little accordion file I'm using now. We don't have the advantage of being able to shop around and whatnot, but the savings sure do add up.:thumbup:

I did not know about this! So cool. It always drives me crazy when I clip a coupon and then miss an expiration date. Sometimes the inserts expire quickly, sometimes they don't... Anyway, I'll have to keep that in mind going forward!

The volunteer group I'm in sends the coupons over via this site http://www.ocpnet.org/. You pick a base to send them to and then they have a certain way they want them sorted (food/non-food). We've sent thousands of dollars worth over the past few years. It really is a great program.

Yup! If I can't use them, but someone else still can, I definitely want to send them out! :)

That's what I'm thinking... if it's just browsing the blogs and printing coupons off as I need them, I could do that.. but clipping, organizing and saving just wouldn't happen around here. I'd even up with stacks of coupons which would end up expiring before I knew it!

We also only have HEB... sometimes I shop at Target, CVS or Walgreens... I could do Walmart, but think I'd rather stick a fork in my eye- it's a madhouse at the one near me.

You don't have to do the binder method. I know some people love it, but that is way too much work for me to clip all the coupons each week and sort them. So, I do the bin method. I just have one of those cheap $3 file bins from Walmart and a bunch of file folders. Each week of inserts gets its own folder. When I get my Sunday paper, the coupons go straight into their folder for the week. No clipping or organizing. Then the blogs/sites I follow post the coupon matchups and tell me where the coupons are (they tell the insert and the date of the insert) so I just go to my bin and pull out the inserts I need, clip the coupons I need for my trip, throw the inserts back into their folders, and make my little stack of coupons for my shopping trip. It does mean that I don't have all my coupons with me all the time, but I knew I wouldn't stay on top of it if I did the binder method. And yes, a lot of your coupons will expire... just let go of them and don't worry about it. :)

This is my bin... I need to go and throw out some of my old inserts to make room for the newer inserts. And I need more date tabs... not all my folders have a tab because I ran out. haha

http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/j..._8274-copy.jpg

Mambo Sprout has coupons for organic and other foods/products for special dietary needs like Gluten Free. :)

I homeschool my kiddos, try to cook healthy meals, work a part-time job and try to scrapbook so couponing use to give me the hives!! Following all those blogs everyone mentioned took too much time. LOL But now I am a member of www.thegrocerygame.com. I pay $15 every eight weeks for two stores nearby and every Sunday I log-in to my account and get all the coupon deals for my stores! I just select the items I want and print! It is sooo quick and easy and they tell me right where to coupons are in my box! (That is right I just store all my coupons in a box in date order!) Super easy! It is the BEST thing I did for my checkbook! Plus, I still have tons of time to do all the other things I love! There is a free 28 day Trial so check it out. www.thegrocerygame.com

Michelle

Thanks for sharing your bin Megan! I've used the binder method in the past and found it super hard to keep up with. I think this might work better for me!

Dear Self,
After reading all of the meal planning and coupon clipping tips and tricks in the forum this month (Thanks, all!), don't pat yourself on the back for your thriftiness if you don't actually give the coupons to the cashier and leave them instead in your newly created filing envelope, which was actually in your hands at the register...

$4. Bummer! Gotta perfect the system, I guess! :)

I've done this way too many times .... Or planned to buy something only because you have the coupon & got up to the register and realized you didn't grab the right amount to qualify for the coupon - ugh!

Stephanie

Not just me, then... Phew! :)

I've been following along in this thread and wishing I could do it but we don't eat like normal folks. I have a wheat allergy with gluten sensitivity so anything canned, boxed, processed, etc... is out of the question and that's all you ever see coupons on (food wise). Our grocery bill is the highest of all bills in my house. At least 600/month for family of 3 and we hardly ever eat pricey stuff like steak and crab legs. Gluten free + diabetes sucks the life out of the budget. If it weren't for my eating habits this family would have some extra money :( But hey, my pricey eating habits may keep me alive longer- guess that's the up side.

Thank you for the link. If anyone else has suggestions I'd love to hear them.

I keep saying that I want to coupon more. We get inserts from BJ's and use those a ton, but I know that we could also be stacking manufacturer's coupons on top of those and be saving even more. I'm just very intimidated. I have started using coupons.com (also through swagbucks now), but since I'm not the primary grocery shopper sometimes it's hard.

We mostly shop at BJ's and Giant (not Giant Eagle). I know we could be saving a lot more, and that I should make it a priority. I just don't know where to start. Like, do you get the paper every day? Or only on sundays? We don't get the paper and probably won't read it either, but I'm always hearing that it's super worth it just for the coupons.

This is true. I try to coupon as much as possible, since food here is really price due to having it being shipped over. I try to remind family and friends often, without pestering that I will gladly take their expired coupons, up to 6 months past the expiration date. :) I feel like I'm doing well to save between 10-25% per grocery trip usually. I trade coupons with several friends too. It helps. :)

If you want to coupon you could still use them for paper goods, cleaning items (although I don't use a lot of commercial cleaners myself and usually just wait until the only clothes detergent we use goes on sale). I don't know if you have restrictions on the health & beauty items you can use because of being gluten-free, but I use coupons a lot for toothpaste, floss, shampoo, etc.

Currently Amazon is having a sale on select Bob's Red Mill items and a 4 pack of the gluten free pancake mix is on sale plus there is a code for an additional 15% off, plus you could get another 15% by signing up for subscribe and save. This sale goes on through Jan. 31. To find this sale go to Grocery and Gourmet Food under Departments. Then go to Special Offers (across the top of the screen under the cart). Then Click on Baking and you will see the Bob's Red Mill offer. Click on the offer and then it will show you all of the products that are part of the offer. The code for the 15% is at the top of the screen.

I have ordered food from Amazon myself and I would recommend it to anyone. I have also signed up for subscribe and save. You can cancel when you want or even change when they send you another shipment (just don't cancel before you get the original shipment or you won't get the additional 15% off).

Do you notice if the items you regularly purchase go on sale? I know that is probably more difficult for specialty items but if you can purchase when an item is on sale and then get enough to last you to the next sale (unless it would spoil beforehand) that can help to reduce your costs. Many items are on a 3 month sale schedule but that may vary from store to store.

I also try to make from scratch and simplify when I can, which can also help to save money. I know there are a few bread machines that can handle making gluten free bread. You can look for ones that have a gluten free setting and read reviews. The cost of the bread machine might be worth it if it will save you money on gluten free bread items. Just an idea.

The coupon insert from the weekend and then be sure to check Tues/Wednesdays mail for the coupon inserts that come with the grocery store ads, etc.

I'm starting small. I'm getting the paper, cutting out the coupons I'll use (like Amy, we purchase a lot of foods that don't get coupons, but I do buy toiletries and cat food and litter and such), put the rest in a box to be exchanged or shipped to military. I just have a little coupon envelope for now, which will grow as I begin to collect more of what I'll use.

We never get a grocery ad for the store that we shop at. :confused:

Try subscribing to one online at their site, then. Sometimes they do them online.

Why didn't I think of that? LOL!
We get inserts for RANDOM grocery stores, that I don't even know where they are. There's a Weis right down the street from us, but we're not fond of it. The Giant is much nicer and has better produce, so we go there. Plus we get a lot of stuff from BJ's.

Col, if you look at the Customer FAQs for Giant on their website it looks like you can double coupon up to 99c and the limits are very few if I have the correct store (I know there are a lot of Giants on the East coast so I might have the wrong one). Woo Hoo for you!

This is my store:
http://www.giantfood.com/customer_se...htm?q=shopping

So, how or when can you double coupons? I guess the store will have like, double coupon days?

They seem to only do online circulars unless you sign up to get them in the mail. So that's good to know. I made an online account with them, so I can keep up with it.
Now I just need to work on getting manufacturers coupons, so I can stack them with their sales. I should probably find a blog that does match ups for this store too.....

You can double up to 4 like coupons on any day. So 4 cheerios coupons, 4 lean cuisine coupons, etc.

http://athriftymom.com/category/giant/

She does matchups.

Amy, I do much more non-food couponing then I do foods. I do CVS and Walgreens shopping most weeks, and between register rewards, extra bucks and coupons, I rarely pay actual money over $1 on any trip. (I have to pay tax out of pocket). I haven't paid for body wash, shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant and many other toiletries in about 3 years now I think. It may not cut down your food bill, but it will still cut down on your household expenses.

Thanks for the link!
So does the computer automatically double the value of the coupon? Or do I have to do something? I'm a total coupon newb.