For as long as I can remember, my husband and I have always used coupons here and there but nothing major. When his work started slowing down and money was tight, I really started to bargain shop. These past few months I have been really doing well! I mean-I save at least 50% when I go to the stores. It is amazing!
How do I do it? First of all I do not buy things I do not need just because I have a coupon. But I have learned not to be brand specific. For instance-butter: if I have a coupon for Olivio but my favorite brand is Smart balance-I am gonna get Olivio-especially if it is at good savings. Usually I wait for the buy one get one free (BOGO) sales and use 2 coupons so the items are practically free.
If you could see my pantry-I have such a stockpile of free or almost free stuff like cereal, rice, snacks, juices-you name it. As far as toiletries, I don’t think I will ever need to buy any of it ever again! I get some pretty good stuff for cheap or for free. I do it with 3 maybe 4 stores depending on the sales that week. I have become so happy with saving money that I actually seek out these deals! It has become my new hobby actually!
I spend maybe an hour on Sundays going through the sale ads and matching coupons (I did that today and there were loads of them!). There are actually websites and blogs out there that people have (they are lifesavers!) that give examples of how they save money and what coupons they used. Some even do coupon match-ups for you. They will tell you the sales for a certain store (let’s say Target) and what coupons you can use to maximize your savings.
I usually buy a few newspapers now especially if there are a lot of coupons inserts in it. I also ask my in-laws to save me whatever they don’t want. There are also coupons that you can print online. I am just beginning to really save a lot at the stores but I can tell you, if you take at least an hour a week to plan your trips and match coupons-it is so worth it!
I use to read about people doing this and thought it was too much time wasted. One of my coworkers and I got into a little debate about coupons and he told me they were a waste of time. I showed him my long receipt from Target and how I saved over $50 and he still said it was a waste of time. I told him, I don’t make $50 an hour and that is all it took for me to save this money. So to me, I think of it as I earned $50 for cutting coupons! Hey, I am fine with that.
A few pointers for you if you want to start couponing:
- Start small-don’t overwhelm yourself with too many coupons!
- Start collecting your coupon inserts and put them away for a few weeks. Magically about 3 weeks later, the stores will start putting those items on sale.
- Make sure that while you are collecting the inserts, you are keeping them in order.
- Visit coupon websites to read about deals or get free advice. I do this all the time and I can’t tell you how valuable these sites are. Never pay for this information. There are tons of free sites out there. Some that I read just to name a few are:
For those of us in the south-these help out tremendously…especially if you shop at Publix, CVS or Walgreens:
There are tons of sites out there-I could not even begin to name them all. Every single one of these that I have listed have helped me save so much money. See them for yourself. You know, I thought about doing a saving site like one of these but it’s a lot of work and I just couldn’t keep up with it every week. These women take a lot of time and do an awesome job helping everyone save money. I hope you will check them out.
Tags: Coupon
