One of my friends posted this on her blog so this is what she wrote about COUPONING 101...(Bolded additions are my little thoughts)
1. Subscribe to a newspaper. I know lots of people who don't want to pay for a newspaper and so get their coupons online. This is fine, but you won't be able to get the full benefits of coupons if you don't have a newspaper coming to your house. The best coupons are usually in the newspaper. And stores are more likely to coupon match with a newspaper coupon versus a printed coupon.
2. Think about getting multiple copies of the newspaper I currently get 2 copies of the Sunday paper every week. When we were in Provo, I received 3. The more copies you have the more you can save. I suggest looking for the cheapest Sunday newspaper in your area which offers coupons and seeing what deals they have for buying multiple copies each week. Often there are deals for becoming a new subscriber. For instance, in our area, you can get the newspaper for $1 a week when you're a new customer. So, I signed up under my name and Troy's name :) We get TWO Sunday newspapers each week for $8 a month. If you're worried about another monthly fee, let me tell you this: you will always, ALWAYS, make back the money paid out for newspaper and this usually happens in one shopping trip. I easily save the $8 many times over with my coupon shopping deals in a month. I promise you, it's worth the price.The benefit of having more than one copy of each coupon is that when the item goes on sale, you can REALLY stock up. For instance, say you can buy your favorite cereal this week on sale. The cereal is on sale for $1.00 a box, but you have a $1.00 of two box coupon which means you're getting two boxes at $0.50 a box. Amazing! Look at you saving money :) Now if you have multiple copies of the newspaper, you'll have TWO or THREE copies of that coupon and so you'll be getting FOUR or SIX boxes of that cereal you love at the ridiculous price of $0.50 a box. Even MORE amazing!! Multiple copies of each coupon help you stock your shelves and stock them good. Right now, two copies are doing us just fine. I might consider going down to one copy in the future. But you just have to weigh the cost benefit for your individual family and see what you think. Maybe you want to start with one copy and then as you go you can add. The savings is exponential with multiple copies.
3. Find a FREE online coupon service. A coupon service matches the coupons with the grocery sales for you. This way your brain doesn't have to explode doing all of that matching yourself. The coupon service will also tell you just how good of a deal you're getting. Each item is usually given a rating depending on how much you are saving (how much % off.) This has helped me IMMENSELY with getting to know what's a good deal and what's not. That was something that was really hard for me when we first got married. I never knew if the price was good enough for me to start stocking up on something. Now, after looking at coupon service sites for a couple years, I'm pretty good at knowing when the items I buy are on a rocking sale and I should probably buy the whole shelf. (And sometimes I really do :)There are plenty of sites that will charge you to offer this service. However, if you're willing to sacrifice a little and work with a less pretty website, you can find just as many people who offer the same information for FREE. Free is always better.While we were in Provo I used Savvy Shopper Deals via the Daily Herald (Utah county newspaper). Amy is the one who runs it. She came to an enrichment in my ward and got me hooked. You can go there and watch some video tutorials that will be helpful to get you started. The best is the "shopping wizard" which is a super user friendly shopping list that you use to make your own personalized shopping list to keep you organized before going to the store. This site was great for P-town, and I still use it sometimes for national stores like Target and Walgreens, but for your every day grocery stores, I needed something else. Thus I foundGrocery Smarts. It's the same idea and it's also free. The list is more ghetto than Savvy Shopper Deals, but that's okay, I'll take free :) It's also available in many states. I use this weekly to get me some awesome deals. Because I don't like the way this site prints your shopping list, I have created an excel file which I use each week. It's not very fancy at all. I just have sections with the stores I go to often. Then I look up each store individually on Grocery Smarts and copy and paste the items I want to buy into the excel list. Having all the stores and items on one page helps me be more organized, which is the next tip... (There are a lot of blogs out there which will tell you the deals I like to look at them too because sometimes they will figure out how to make your shopping transactions. I like the Savvy Shopper site because it can organize your shopping list for you for all the stores)
4. Get organized. Whether it be with a binder or a filing system for your coupons Savvy Shopper Deals shows you one way to organize is to use a binder with baseball card sheets to hold your coupons. (Melea from a blog Freebies2Deals shows some organizing techniques here)
5. Be Patient. You can do it! Sounds cheesy, I know, but it's important to understand something before you get into couponing. It is frustrating at first, it really is. Being organized is key, but even if you're really organized, it takes some getting used to. I remember being so frustrated at the store with Jackson crying and thinking about crying too as I stared at coupons and cereal boxes and got a headache. Then, not too much later, things started to click in my head. I became more organized and learned a few tricks and I walked into the store and I bought ten boxes of cereal for $0.68. Yes, $0.68!!!!!! It was the most thrilling thing ever. Not every week is like that, but I still get excited about my deals and can't wait to tell Troy how much money I saved. So, I promise, you can do it. Just be patient.Amy, from the Daily Herald, told us at our enrichment you should plan on 2 months to get all your coupons on file from when you start getting the newspaper. (This is because coupons rotate. Most companies always have a coupon out for a certain product. When it expires, a new coupon for the same product will usually come out the next Sunday.) And four months for your shelves to be stocked. After those four months, you will be able to stop buying things that you need, and just buy things that are on sale. And this is how you will be able to cut your grocery budget down BIG TIME. It takes a few months to have your shelves stocked with spaghetti sauce and pasta so that you'll have enough to keep you covered until those items go on sale with a coupon again. Does that makes sense? Then you just rotate through your food as you buy new stuff. It's an excellent form of food storage. I definitely don't have a year's supply of everything, but for a few things I do. Coupons helped me do it!Also on the subject of being patient. I've found to get the very best deals, you have to go to multiple stores. It's a pain, but it's how you get what's on sale. Saving $1.50 on milk each week adds up. So will all the savings from everything else. If going to more than one store is overwhelming for you, start by shopping at Walmart or Target where they will price match from other grocery stores. Just be sure to take those ads in with you so they can see them. If you have the ad, they are usually more than happy to give you the sale price.
So there you go-- Couponing 101. If you decide to do this, you will learn little tricks that help as you go. Here are a few of the ones I've learned that aren't listed above:
1- Going at the BEGINNING of the sale. Most grocery sales run from Wednesday to Tuesday. Going on Wednesday or Thursday is going to ensure that you have good selection. When I first started, I would sometimes go shopping on Tuesday night. Not a good idea. ESPECIALLY if you live in an area with a lot of couponers. You will be much more successful if you start early. (I usually can't make it on the days that they start the sales being a one car family, but find out when your store re-stocks their shelves and then you can get what you want, most of the time, if not there will be another sale.)
2- Get Rain checks. Sometimes rain checks are available right in your grocery line from the cashier. When the cashier asked if you found everything okay. Say no and tell them you'd like a rain check. Most rain checks last 30 days. Then you can come back then next week when the cereal isn't on sale and use your rain check to get the sale price, paired with your amazing coupon of course! :)(The Rite Aid in Provo is AWESOME, they'll call you when your rain check arrives at the store. Others you just need to come back and check and that works out too.)
3- If it's a really good sale and your store is completely out of what you want, you might consider going to another store location. I've done this and found which stores usually picked over, which stores are busy at certain times, and which stores are empty. It's helped me in the long run. Phew. I think that about covers it. I'm sorry for the long, long post. I just wanted to be thorough. If you have more questions, feel free to ask. (I wish I'd had a "coupon mentor" of sorts when I'd gotten started. As ridiculous as that sounds! Ha ha.) I'm happy to help because I feel like coupons have really made a difference in our family finances.
A tip I might ad is that sometimes you need a break. There will ALWAYS be another sale, ALWAYS!
3. Find a FREE online coupon service. A coupon service matches the coupons with the grocery sales for you. This way your brain doesn't have to explode doing all of that matching yourself. The coupon service will also tell you just how good of a deal you're getting. Each item is usually given a rating depending on how much you are saving (how much % off.) This has helped me IMMENSELY with getting to know what's a good deal and what's not. That was something that was really hard for me when we first got married. I never knew if the price was good enough for me to start stocking up on something. Now, after looking at coupon service sites for a couple years, I'm pretty good at knowing when the items I buy are on a rocking sale and I should probably buy the whole shelf. (And sometimes I really do :)There are plenty of sites that will charge you to offer this service. However, if you're willing to sacrifice a little and work with a less pretty website, you can find just as many people who offer the same information for FREE. Free is always better.While we were in Provo I used Savvy Shopper Deals via the Daily Herald (Utah county newspaper). Amy is the one who runs it. She came to an enrichment in my ward and got me hooked. You can go there and watch some video tutorials that will be helpful to get you started. The best is the "shopping wizard" which is a super user friendly shopping list that you use to make your own personalized shopping list to keep you organized before going to the store. This site was great for P-town, and I still use it sometimes for national stores like Target and Walgreens, but for your every day grocery stores, I needed something else. Thus I foundGrocery Smarts. It's the same idea and it's also free. The list is more ghetto than Savvy Shopper Deals, but that's okay, I'll take free :) It's also available in many states. I use this weekly to get me some awesome deals. Because I don't like the way this site prints your shopping list, I have created an excel file which I use each week. It's not very fancy at all. I just have sections with the stores I go to often. Then I look up each store individually on Grocery Smarts and copy and paste the items I want to buy into the excel list. Having all the stores and items on one page helps me be more organized, which is the next tip... (There are a lot of blogs out there which will tell you the deals I like to look at them too because sometimes they will figure out how to make your shopping transactions. I like the Savvy Shopper site because it can organize your shopping list for you for all the stores)
4. Get organized. Whether it be with a binder or a filing system for your coupons Savvy Shopper Deals shows you one way to organize is to use a binder with baseball card sheets to hold your coupons. (Melea from a blog Freebies2Deals shows some organizing techniques here)
5. Be Patient. You can do it! Sounds cheesy, I know, but it's important to understand something before you get into couponing. It is frustrating at first, it really is. Being organized is key, but even if you're really organized, it takes some getting used to. I remember being so frustrated at the store with Jackson crying and thinking about crying too as I stared at coupons and cereal boxes and got a headache. Then, not too much later, things started to click in my head. I became more organized and learned a few tricks and I walked into the store and I bought ten boxes of cereal for $0.68. Yes, $0.68!!!!!! It was the most thrilling thing ever. Not every week is like that, but I still get excited about my deals and can't wait to tell Troy how much money I saved. So, I promise, you can do it. Just be patient.Amy, from the Daily Herald, told us at our enrichment you should plan on 2 months to get all your coupons on file from when you start getting the newspaper. (This is because coupons rotate. Most companies always have a coupon out for a certain product. When it expires, a new coupon for the same product will usually come out the next Sunday.) And four months for your shelves to be stocked. After those four months, you will be able to stop buying things that you need, and just buy things that are on sale. And this is how you will be able to cut your grocery budget down BIG TIME. It takes a few months to have your shelves stocked with spaghetti sauce and pasta so that you'll have enough to keep you covered until those items go on sale with a coupon again. Does that makes sense? Then you just rotate through your food as you buy new stuff. It's an excellent form of food storage. I definitely don't have a year's supply of everything, but for a few things I do. Coupons helped me do it!Also on the subject of being patient. I've found to get the very best deals, you have to go to multiple stores. It's a pain, but it's how you get what's on sale. Saving $1.50 on milk each week adds up. So will all the savings from everything else. If going to more than one store is overwhelming for you, start by shopping at Walmart or Target where they will price match from other grocery stores. Just be sure to take those ads in with you so they can see them. If you have the ad, they are usually more than happy to give you the sale price.
So there you go-- Couponing 101. If you decide to do this, you will learn little tricks that help as you go. Here are a few of the ones I've learned that aren't listed above:
1- Going at the BEGINNING of the sale. Most grocery sales run from Wednesday to Tuesday. Going on Wednesday or Thursday is going to ensure that you have good selection. When I first started, I would sometimes go shopping on Tuesday night. Not a good idea. ESPECIALLY if you live in an area with a lot of couponers. You will be much more successful if you start early. (I usually can't make it on the days that they start the sales being a one car family, but find out when your store re-stocks their shelves and then you can get what you want, most of the time, if not there will be another sale.)
2- Get Rain checks. Sometimes rain checks are available right in your grocery line from the cashier. When the cashier asked if you found everything okay. Say no and tell them you'd like a rain check. Most rain checks last 30 days. Then you can come back then next week when the cereal isn't on sale and use your rain check to get the sale price, paired with your amazing coupon of course! :)(The Rite Aid in Provo is AWESOME, they'll call you when your rain check arrives at the store. Others you just need to come back and check and that works out too.)
3- If it's a really good sale and your store is completely out of what you want, you might consider going to another store location. I've done this and found which stores usually picked over, which stores are busy at certain times, and which stores are empty. It's helped me in the long run. Phew. I think that about covers it. I'm sorry for the long, long post. I just wanted to be thorough. If you have more questions, feel free to ask. (I wish I'd had a "coupon mentor" of sorts when I'd gotten started. As ridiculous as that sounds! Ha ha.) I'm happy to help because I feel like coupons have really made a difference in our family finances.
A tip I might ad is that sometimes you need a break. There will ALWAYS be another sale, ALWAYS!
Also don't be disappointed if you got something on sale one week and it goes on for less the next week, you have to tell yourself that you got it at the best deal for the week that you got it and still saved money!
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